


Readability

by Elenothar



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Accidental Telepathy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Getting Together, Pike's Talos trauma, Season/Series 02, Supportive Crew, Telepathic Bond, the ethics of involuntarily reading people's minds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28091565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elenothar/pseuds/Elenothar
Summary: The most worrying thing about accidentally having linked her mind to her Captain's during first contact with a telepathic species is how little it worries Michael.Chris has a less easy go of it.
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Christopher Pike
Comments: 31
Kudos: 118





	Readability

**Author's Note:**

> I've given up fighting the urge to write All The Star Trek Tropes, it seems.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to alethia for helping me along with this.

***

Michael lets the barely-perceptible hum of a shuttle at warp sweep through her, leaning back in her seat to cast a surreptitious look at her companion. Captain Pike is still focused on the controls, double checking that all readings are as they should be, and she follows the path of his hands across the dashboard, wondering about his days as a pilot. Few pilots make captain, much less as quickly as he had. The reasons for that are manifold; pilot is statistically one of the posts on board a starship with the shortest life expectancy, but pilots are also often very attached to their posts, unwilling to hand control over to others even by rising up the ranks on the command track. Privately, she is also of the opinion that quite a few pilots are a bit too daredevil to make a good captain, which begs the question how the extremely even-tempered Christopher Pike had ended up as a test pilot in the first place.

The man in question shoots her a glance that seems to be caught somewhere between amused and bemused. “Something interesting?”

“Just woolgathering,” she admits, comfortable enough with him by now to do so.

Pike shoots her a quick smile. “Plenty of time for it.” He leans back in his own seat, apparently satisfied that the shuttle continues to be in excellent working condition. “Any new insight into the signal?”

Michael shakes her head. “We won’t be able to tell anything for certain until we arrive at its origin. I still think it’s dissimilar enough to the red signals that it’s likely entirely unrelated, but…”

“But the admiralty is spooked and every avenue needs to be explored, stat,” he finishes the sentence for her, something wry in the tilt of his head. “Kat was _very_ clear.”

It’s the perfect opening to ask something that’s been niggling at her ever since they’d received their new orders. “Is that why you’re going personally?”

Pike’s eyes sharpen, studying her expression for a charged moment before the sharpness slides back behind his usual affable demeanour. “Command _has_ expressed that they want me to oversee every aspect of the Red Angel matter. But to be entirely frank, going on a shuttle trip is far preferable to sitting in that nebula for another day while scans come in, with nothing to do but watch you science geniuses at work and slog through paperwork.” He leans toward her conspiratorially. “It _multiplies_.”

Michael smiles, appreciative of his light-hearted humour, and can’t help a little needling. “Particularly when you leave the ship every chance you get.”

He gasps, hand coming to rest over his heart in mock-hurt. “Et tu, brute?”

“More Shakespeare?”

Pike shrugs. “A giant of Earth literature, you must admit.”

Before she can comment, a beep from the dashboard draws both their attention. They’re only halfway to their destination, so it can’t be the alert that they’re about to drop out of warp.

Pike frowns, flicking through the data offered by the computer. “The external sensor readings look very strange… have you seen anything like it?”

Michael leans forward, scrutinising the information. Shuttles don’t come equipped with more than basic sensors and travel at warp is too fast to pick up much anyway, but he’s right – the readings are _very_ strange.

“No, sir. I couldn’t begin to make a guess.”

They exchange a glance. Their mission lies with the signal they’re pursuing, but Starfleet’s first mandate has always been to _explore_.

Pike reads her agreement in her expression and nods. “Dropping out of warp in three, two, one.”

The shuttle jolts gently, but Michael is focused on the updated readings coming in as Pike gazes out the cockpit screen.

“Still the same strange readings,” she reports, looking up to find that they’re floating in empty space, nothing to be seen that could be giving off readings of any sort. “I’ll try to recalibrate the sensors.”

She notices Pike going rigid out of the corner of her eyes, turning just as he gasps in pain, his hands going over his ears as he curls forward. Michael marks the blood dripping from his nose with horror, something wrenching inside her at the sight.

She wants to jump forward, prop him up and do her best to help, but she doesn’t know what this _is_ , it came out of nowhere, and she can’t discount that she’ll be affected too. She hits the emergency beacon toggle and stands to get the medkit – only to collapse back into her chair when a force slams into her brain.

Michael might be screaming, but the world has fallen away, subsumed by the overwhelming wave of sensation entering her mind from seemingly nowhere, as if the universe is trying to fit in her head without caring that she’s far too small a vessel.

Awareness of Pike/Chris/Christopher Pike/Captain Pike/Christopher Aquila Pike blooms behind her eyes, she can feel his mirroring pain and confusion, as overwhelmed as she herself is, swaying wildly in a storm. Clumsily she grasps for him, trying to keep them both anchored. What she’d thought was full awareness of him explodes into detail, coloured now where it had been black and white before. Christopher Pike’s essence is a warm gold, vast blue and comforting green and, as discombobulating as this entire experience is, she wants to study it forever. It would be so easy to fall into it and forget about the rest of the galaxy.

There’s the sense of a returned scrutiny and with a jolt the small part of her that’s still able to _think_ realises that this connection is going both ways. She almost lets go, almost lets the blinding outside in again where focus on him has stabilised them both.

Before she can gather herself again, a voice intrudes from the outside, resonating in her mind – in both of their minds? – so loudly she loses track of everything else, except it’s not a voice, there’s no _sound._

– _YOU ARE NOT MADE FOR THIS. WE SHALL WITHDRAW –_

A vague sense of apology accompanies the words. Michael doesn’t know how she knows that what just happened, _whatever_ just happened, was not instigated out of malice but she is nevertheless certain right down through to her bones and she can feel Chris’ agreement.

It’s the withdrawal of the vast presence, the sudden absence and emptiness that rushes in after it that finally overtaxes her mind and sends her spiralling into darkness.

*

Unconsciousness recedes grudgingly, allowing for a few seconds of muzzy thinking and recognition of the Sickbay ceiling above her before cacophony invades her mind again. Different emotions beat at her from all sides, accompanied by snatches of voices, thought, _something_ until it’s barely more than babble.

– _wonder what happened to them, never seen anything quite like_ –

– _Nilsson is waiting in the commissary_ –

– _egg burger_ –

– _we really need to replace this laser scalpel it keeps sputtering_ –

Michael is keening and she doesn’t even notice the sound is coming from her own throat until her panicked eyes find Doctor Pollard’s concerned face and a hypo is heading for her neck.

The world slips away again.

*

The second time Michael wakes goes much better – not that it could’ve gone worse. Her head is clear enough to automatically search for the awareness of Chris and find only a deep sense of blankness there. Not absent, like all the other input she’d struggled with on her last awakening was absent, but not conscious either.

She mentally grinds to a halt as she realises what she’d just done. Her first instinct had been to check on him. He’s _there_ , in her mind. No barrier lies between them and no immediate concern at the lack swamps her mind, which is almost more surprising than the fact that she can feel him like this in the first place.

None of this is even _remotely likely_.

Before her thoughts can spiral further, a voice she’s almost certain isn’t in her mind but coming through her ears – not something she’d ever thought she would have trouble differentiating – interrupts her, and she finally takes in her surroundings.

She’s in one of the isolation units near Sickbay, entirely alone. These units are built to keep _everything_ out, including mental stimulus for species who are sensitive to inputs that baseline humans don’t have to worry about, which explains why her mind is quiet. The voice is Doctor Pollard’s over the intercom, which also makes sense – they must have worried everyone with their chaotic awakening earlier.

“ – Burnham, acknowledge. Can you hear me?”

Belatedly she tunes in to what Pollard is actually saying and nods, only to wince at the tenderness in her neck and temples.

“Yes, I’m here, Doctor.”

“Good,” Pollard says, sounding more relieved than Michael has ever heard her. “We were worried about you there for a while.”

Questions crowd her tongue, reasonable, logical questions about her current condition. What actually comes out of her mouth is, “Where is Chris?”

There’s a brief pause, in which she realises that she used the Captain’s first name out loud. She knows it will be seen as out of character, but in her head he _is_ Chris now, irrevocably, couldn’t be anything else after their minds had been so intertwined.

“Captain Pike is still sedated,” Pollard tells her, voice unusually gentle. “He’s in the next room over – he had a worse reaction to… whatever happened to you.”

Michael nods, but her mind is elsewhere. A worse reaction than her? Hers hadn’t exactly been light. And what _had_ happened to them? She remembers the shuttle, Chris stiffening and then her mind had… her mind had…

She breathes in and out several times, trying to find calm. “What’s happening to us?”

Pollard sighs. “You’re telepathic right now, Commander, and strongly so. We have no idea how or why, but the scans show brain activity comparable to a full-blooded Betazoid. Except you don’t have the necessary familiarity and training to cope with the amount of new input to your brain.”

 _Telepathic_ , Michael thinks blankly, no room in her mind even to appreciate Pollard’s bluntness as she usually does. She is human. Chris is human. How could they be telepathic? All the noise she kept hearing was actually the thoughts of the people around her. She winces at the thought, at the invasion of privacy, but it’s not like it had been intentional on her part. Michael had spent years of her childhood _wishing_ to have touch telepathy like the Vulcans she spent her time with – to fit in better, but also because the intimacy around it sounded, well, beautiful. Then again, Vulcans can decide _when_ to read someone else’s mind, which is much less fraught than whatever she’s doing right now.

But hadn’t it been beautiful? The feeling of Chris’ mind, his very essence wrapping around her, secure and warm and everything he is, everything that makes him _him_ , and yes, that moment had been beautiful. His _mind_ was beautiful.

(She remembers the distant shock that his inner being is as beautiful as his outer shell – the one she’s spent some weeks trying not to get distracted by. It’s not that beauty is new; she has met many beautiful people, not a few of them on Discovery, but Christopher Pike had drawn her in other ways; kindness, thoughtfulness, loyalty to his people, the impressive picture that his service record draws of the man. To have all that confirmed, only made sweeter by a new appreciation of his flaws – stubbornness, self sacrifice, a rigid moral high ground that can rub people the wrong way – as well… No, she can’t think about that right now, not until she’s on firmer mental ground.)

She had never been able to imagine anything like the intensity of mental contact like this. No wonder Vulcans didn’t go in for courting those who cannot engage in reciprocal telepathy.

“Burnham?”

Pollard’s voice stirs her back to the present.

“How long is this going to last?” she asks, wrenching her mind firmly back into problem-solving mode. “Can it be reversed?”

“That’s the good news,” Pollard says. “As far as we can tell it’s already fading. Whatever happened to make you suddenly telepathic was likely never intended to be permanent – your brain is already relearning its old pathways. It may take a couple of weeks to be fully free of it, but you will be.”

A couple of weeks. That sounds doable. Except –

“Do I have to stay in here the entire time?”

The intercom picks up the snort Pollard lets loose in perfect clarity. “The isolation unit is a precaution since you reacted so violently to waking in Sickbay. There’s nothing physically wrong with you – I would counsel getting used to your new sense with one or two people at a time, until you can regulate the inflow better. Once you can prove that you’re not going to lose it when you’re in mental reach of a group of people, I’m happy to let you go back to your quarters and restricted duty.”

Michael scowls reflexively but can’t exactly argue with the assessment. It would be irresponsible to be on duty on the bridge if her mind is unstable – she’d be a liability in a crisis.

“And” – she remembers just in time to pause and adjust the shape of the name on her tongue – “Captain Pike?”

“Same boat as you,” Pollard says, neutral. “I suggest you support each other through this as much as possible. You’re the only one who knows what he’s going through right now, and vice versa.”

Michael nods. She doesn’t need a doctor telling her to do what she would’ve done anyway, but she appreciates Tracy’s discretion. With many other people her behaviour regarding the Captain would be feeding the gossip mill for days to come. She fully trusts Doctor Pollard to keep her silence.

“Thanks, Doctor. I don’t suppose you have any volunteers who are willing to help me get this under control?”

“Do I ever,” Pollard says dryly. “I’ll send her in.”

Michael’s first thought is that she isn’t exactly surprised to see the door to the isolation unit open to admit Tilly, ginger hair wild and eyes wide. There _is_ no second thought – she’s too busy trying to breathe through the sudden influx of Tilly-ness to her mind. Where Chris’ mind had calmed her with its steadiness, Tilly apparently thinks at a dizzying speed, related and unrelated thoughts fizzing in her mind, intertwining and separating, discarded as quickly as they arise. Now they’re fizzing in Michael’s mind, too, and she forces herself to keep breathing evenly, blinking her eyes to hold back sudden tears.

Tilly’s mind is so very _Tilly_.

Focusing hard, she begins to slowly push the input to one side of her thoughts, still there, still present, but more of a background noise that she can dip in and out of at will than demanding all the attention she has.

It frees her up to finally register auditory input picked up by her ears. Tilly’s mouth has been moving ever since she came in, and finally the words make it through the haze of Tilly’s mental commentary, leaving Michael with the ability to answer. To reassure.

“ – and we really can’t have you spacing out all the time because it’s freaking me out – ”

“I will be all right, Tilly,” Michael says, finally interrupting the stream of words. The resultant wave of relief from her friend is almost strong enough to knock her careful mental work out of alignment, but she perseveres. “It’s… a lot to get used to, but I am.”

Tilly peers at her, clearly a little sceptical still, despite her relief. “So your brain isn’t about to, I don’t know, combust from all that new stuff swimming around in it?”

“No combustion,” Michael assures her solemnly, going on the assumption that Pollard would’ve warned her if that were even a dim possibility. It’s strange to know the truth behind things she had previously intuited about the way Tilly speaks, i.e. that she doesn’t actually think Michael’s head is going to combust but that she needs some way to express her worry. How do telepathic species _do this_?

“It should wear off in a few days.”

This time the relief is even stronger and Michael shakes her head a little in a vain attempt to clear it. Tilly is watching her with sympathy etched into her expression and she’s thinking about how hard it must be for someone like Michael, who is always so private, to suddenly be up in _everyone’s_ business like this.

“You don’t… mind?” Michael finally asks. She feels the truth of her supposition, but nonetheless feels the need to have it confirmed out loud by Tilly herself. That would be only fair, right? She can’t start judging everyone by what they think rather than actually say or do.

(That is… going to be hard. Michael has been reliably informed that she’s a bit of a judgy person in general, courtesy of being exceedingly competent, which isn’t something she normally feels any guilt over.)

Tilly shrugs, hair bouncing. The smile on her face looks honest to Michael. “I think it’s kind of neat, actually, but I realise that’s maybe not the standard response.” Her face softens further. “I don’t mind you knowing me like this, Michael. I’ve met other telepaths before, it’s all cool.”

Michael shakes her head, marvelling. She knows Tilly is not without doubts – about herself, about her place in the world – but in things like this she is far beyond many beings older than her.

“Thank you,” she says, putting all the warmth she has into it.

Tilly darts forward to give her a quick hug, brief enough that Michael can gasp through the spike in thought intensity, then steps back to ask, “So, are you ready for a second visitor? We need to get you used to this, and Saru is waiting outside.”

Michael takes a deep breath, mentally bracing herself. “All right.”

Saru’s emotions are a little sharper, crisper than those of the humans she has so far encountered. Not so different it would give her pause, but just a _little_ alien. If she weren’t quite so off-kilter, she might find these new insights fascinating. Perhaps she’ll find her way to it before this is all over.

At any rate, two minds don’t seem to be much worse than one, in terms of input her mind has to cope with. They both have a distinct flavour, but don’t yet overwhelm her senses.

“Michael.” Saru keeps his voice quiet and gentle, taking care not to startle her. “It is good to see you conscious.”

Michael smiles at him. “And good to be so. Can you tell me what happened? I’m missing… most everything since the shuttle.”

“We received a distress signal from you five hours after you left the shuttle bay,” Saru tells her, Tilly nodding along. “When we reached your location, your shuttle was stationary in the middle of unoccupied space and you and the Captain were both unconscious.”

Saru’s arm twitches as if he wants to lay a hand on her shoulder but has thought better of it, eyes solemn. It’s just like him to be intuitive enough to know that touch is not the most welcome thing to her already teetering control at the moment. “Can you tell us what happened?”

“I think it was first contact, Saru,” she whispers, remembering the presence she’d felt, the impression of words in her head before she’d even grasped that communication was taking place. “Telepathic first contact. Our brains couldn’t handle it, so they withdrew.”

“They?” Tilly pipes up, face alight with curiosity.

Michael frowns, straining against the bounds of memory. “A hive-mind perhaps? It felt much too large for one entity. We were nowhere near a planet and there were no vessels near – they must _live_ in space.”

“It would explain why we were unaware of the species, even in a sector of space that’s well-explored,” Saru agrees.

Tilly bounces a little on her toes. “And they made you _telepathic_? What’s that like?”

Michael opens her mouth to respond and halts, attention diverted by the impression of movement in the back of her mind. She feels the exact moment that Chris wakes up. The sudden _presence_ in her head makes her draw in a startled breath, but at least half of her surprise stems from Chris himself, his disorientation and shock flooding into her until it becomes hard to distinguish her own feelings from his.

Distantly she can still hear Saru and Tilly speaking (“Commander Burnham? Michael?” – “Yeah, this is a thing she does now”), but most of Michael’s attention is on Chris, on pulling apart just enough to separate their thoughts and feelings without shutting him out – if she even could.

She wonders if he’d be less panicked if he’d woken up like she had, entirely alone in his head.

After a moment some of his confusion resolves into something more targeted.

– _Michael?_ –

– _I’m here_ – she returns as best she can, forming the sentence clearly in her mind and trying to push it in his direction. A measure of relief enters Chris’ mind, but she’s concerned about the dawning sense of horror underneath everything else.

– _What is happening? What happened on the shuttle?_ –

– _Telepathy, apparently_ –

She isn’t sure if dryness translates across a mental link, but she still expects a flare of amusement from him, the equivalent of the look he gives her across the ready room table when she gets a little fresh. Instead, all she gets is the horror intensifying, threatening to overwhelm them both. She wrenches herself backwards just enough to keep breathing, only to find her attention further split when she suddenly becomes aware of hands on her arms, shaking her gently.

“Michael, what is _going on_?”

That’s Tilly’s voice, and Tilly’s worry leaking into her mind, Saru right there with her.

She opens eyes she doesn’t remember closing.

“Chris is awake,” she says, aware that she’s being curt but her awareness of him is filled with all kinds of unhappy emotions, so intertwined she can’t even sort them apart to categorise.

She doesn’t even notice she’s still referring to her Captain so casually, barely registering Tilly’s surprised face and Saru’s questioning head tilt.

Something feels off –

Michael can pinpoint the exact moment Chris begins to spiral.

“I need to go,” she gasps out, already pushing off the biobed to land on legs that barely support her weight.

Saru and Tilly are both talking again, reproving “Michael!” and “Didn’t Pollard say you should get re-acclimatised _slowly_ ”, but she can’t pay attention to them, not when she can _feel_ Chris burning alive in his own mind. It feels like a flashback, horribly visceral and he’s _lost_ in it, she needs to help him.

Michael makes it out the door of her isolation unit on shaky legs, staggers against the wall to rest there for a heartbeat, then pushes herself on to the neighbouring unit. The door release flashes red when she hits it and she almost shouts at it, she can’t afford to wait, she needs an override code –

The knowledge seeps from him into her as if in answer to a request she hadn’t consciously made, Chris on some level still aware despite the vision in whose grasp he’s held tight. Her hand flies over the panel, finally breathing out when the computer’s voice announces, “Captain’s override accepted,” and she can push through, the door closing again behind her before Tilly or Saru can decide to go in with her.

Chris is lying curled up on the biobed, hands grasping his head, fingers in hair she’s never seen so messy, tugging at greying strands.

Michael rushes forward, bending over the bed even as her hands latch onto his, gently tugging them away from his hair.

She doesn’t think he’s processing auditory input at all, so she tries again to push her thoughts at him, push _calm_ at him.

– _It’s not real, Chris. You’re in an isolation unit on the Discovery, you’re fine, I’m fine, everyone’s fine, no one’s hurting, there’s no fire, breathe_ –

He does breathe, chest heaving in gasps that get only barely smoother. His eyes are still tightly shut but at least his fingers are relaxing in her hold, their strength banked as she gets through to him. She keeps talking as the flames in his mind recede, finally leaving room for disjointed impressions of an alien species with large, bulbous heads, a horse (?) and beautiful women, alongside feelings of violation and helplessness.

It doesn’t take a genius to put these things together and realise that the reason he’s reacting worse to his sudden telepathic abilities is because he’s had a bad experience with it in the past.

Michael had never expected that Chris Pike – unflappable Chris Pike, with his quiet strength – could lose himself like this. It makes her wonder what goes on underneath his calm exterior on a normal day, but she supposes it doesn’t matter either way. Her respect for him is already set, and only grows as she now bears witness to how he claws his way back to rationality even in the face of his worst nightmare.

His eyes open, a reassuring glimpse of colour in his pale face even as the pupils are still blown wide with residual panic.

“You’re back,” she says out loud, testing what he’s capable of processing, and he focuses on her, gaze flicking from their joined hands to her face, before blanking, going inward.

“Michael,” he whispers on a sigh, voice hoarse for all that he hadn’t made an audible sound earlier. “Thank you.”

She shakes her head. “You would’ve done the same for me.”

Her mind helpfully offers instances of his quiet, steadying support – believing her about the red angel, his willingness to listen to her feelings regarding Spock, the way he had backed her plan to go down to the Hiawatha as soon as he grasped what she was offering, agreeing to rescue Tilly from the mycelial network despite the risk to the ship and crew, ordering her to break into Spock’s medical records – and a faint hint of red appears on his cheeks.

“Mutual support, then,” Chris says, a welling warmth in his mind banishing the last vestiges of cold panic, even as the sense of horror buried deep within remains. Warmth, she realises, directed at _her_.

She’s still wondering at the depth of feeling there, when a frown appears on his brow as he looks around the isolation unit. She can feel him exerting his will to open his mouth to speak rather than just think at her, preferring the anchor talking affords him. There’s something delightfully, _worryingly_ easy in that way of communication and she understands his hesitance.

“I still felt you,” he murmurs, half stating the truth to himself, half talking to Michael. “When you weren’t in the room.”

 _That shouldn’t be possible_ , his mind says and Michael winces, guilt immediately flaring.

He eyes her, startled.

“That may be my fault. In the shuttle, I… I grabbed onto your mind to keep us from going under. I think I accidentally created a link between us.”

Her hands are still holding and being held by Chris’ – otherwise she would’ve clasped them behind her back, bracing.

In Chris’ mind the scene on the shuttle now replays, largely the same as Michael’s memory of the event with a few fascinating differences, specific to _his_ view of the world. She feels him hit on the moment she’d reached for him, steadied them both in the storm, brief startlement at the results washing away into acceptance.

The tension leaves her shoulders.

“I can’t fault you for trying to keep us both sane,” he observes, some of his characteristic dryness returning. “Succeeding, too, it seems.”

She’s tempted to relax entirely, to take it at face value, but there’s still that lingering horror and discomfort in him. She can’t tell whether it’s directed at her, nor whether she could call him out on it.

But of course he can read her as well as she can him at the moment and he knows immediately what she’s thinking, his mouth twisting into something rueful.

“You already gathered I’m not on entirely… good terms with telepathy.” He stops, a shiver passing through him even as his mind recalls the strange aliens again. “It’s been used against me quite effectively in the past. What I feel, it’s not directed at you, Michael, I can promise you that. I’m simply not… reconciled to the fact that I could do what they did, that those I encounter right now have no defence against my reading their minds. It’s an invasion.”

Michael frowns a little, trying to understand his reasoning. He doesn’t seem worried about her reading his mind as much as him reading _hers_. Reading others.

“I believe everyone has a right to their privacy and I’m not happy to be overturning that, involuntary or not,” he says. His mind flashes to the feeling of Michael’s mind nestled against his, the familiarity that couldn’t help but spring up from that staggering intimacy. “ _We_ are well beyond the point where I would worry.”

She nods, understanding that at least. Still –

“What do you do when you encounter Betazoids? Or Vulcans? Or anyone else telepathic?” A sudden thought hits. “What about Spock – you seem close to him.”

“Vulcan touch-telepathy is much more of a choice,” Chris points out, shoulders moving in a minute shrug. In his mind he sees scenes of him touching Spock, offering comfort in stressful situations and Spock _accepting_. “As for other telepathic species – I can cope with it if they don’t rub it in my face or spread information they could only have gathered by reading my mind. For most, the choice to do so is still that – a choice. They have the training to be polite about it and just skim the surface instead of going digging.”

 _Unlike us_ , echoes between them.

That, she can’t argue with. With a lot of mental effort she can corral what she gets from the minds of those around and keep it from getting out of control, but she hasn’t managed to properly keep anything out at all.

Chris reads that chagrin in her and smiles reassuringly. “Two weeks. We just have to make it two weeks.”

– _An approximate number_ –

His look grows stern.

– _Positive thinking, Michael_ –

It occurs to her that while he’s used her given name before, he’s now doing it very consistently. This line of thought prompts what feels like the equivalent of a mental shrug from him.

– _Trying to stop now would be like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted_ –

She wonders about all the horse references, feels his amusement at the line of thought, but before they can follow the thread, Pollard’s voice sounds over the intercom.

“Are you two doing fine? If you’re feeling stable, I want to do some more scans for which I need to be present.”

Michael startles a little – on reflection, it’s surprising they’d been left alone for this long in the first place, without medical personnel bursting in. Chris’ readings must’ve gone haywire for a while there.

Chris is thinking along similar lines, musing on competent doctors who are invaluable to the smooth running of any ship with an underlying fondness she traces back to the mental image of a kindly-faced doctor who must be his CMO on the Enterprise.

Mental laughter greets that assessment.

– _Kindly-faced? He’ll love to hear that_ –

It’s followed by some disjointed impressions of Chris getting chewed out for putting himself in danger (yet again). Quite stringently.

– _You deserve that_ – Michael retorts, seeing him fly across the ground with a phaser burn in his chest.

Chris doesn’t physically wince, but his mind flinches at the oddness of seeing the scene from someone else’s perspective. There’s no regret there, however – just unwavering certainty that it was the right thing to do and he would do it again.

Michael can’t exactly disagree without looking like a giant hypocrite but that doesn’t make his noble streak any less frightening for a fragile heart which has already seen too much loss.

Chris squeezes her hands firmly, reorienting her in the present. Then he lets go, attention turning to Doctor Pollard’s question, which they’d both ignored for too long already.

“All good, Doctor,” he says firmly, nothing in his voice hinting at the mental pain he’d been experiencing just a few minutes ago. “As Burnham seems fine with more than one person’s thoughts, I’m willing to give it a try – as long as any volunteer is well aware of the circumstances.”

Only Michael notices the minute hesitation before he uses her last name and even that is more because she’s witness to his mental hiccup as he veers away from ‘Michael’ at the last second. It’s strangely comforting to know he’s also struggling with something that had been easy just a few hours ago.

“I’ll be the first,” Doctor Pollard informs them briskly, “but I’ll make certain of it, Captain.”

Chris’ discomfort is as clear in his mind as it isn’t in his expression as they wait for Pollard to enter. Michael shifts a little closer to him, hoping to lend some support and then immediately flushes as his mind immediately sends a pulse of gratitude in return. Even though his mind is _right there_ and she keeps picking things up from him that he doesn’t verbalise, she still keeps forgetting that anything she thinks clearly is going to make it through to him. Much like she keeps glimpsing that warmth directed at her, leading her to conclusions (hopes) she doesn’t feel she should act on right now. She knows Chris has read that reaction in her and hasn’t protested, acknowledging without pushing.

The door mechanism beeps a five second warning.

The skin around Chris’ eyes tightens with effort when Pollard steps through the door, Michael witness, in a strange way, to the way his mind buffets under the increased input. From an outside perspective (of a sort), the process is actually fascinating. When she does it herself she’s too busy to pay much attention to what exactly she’s doing, but as she observes Chris, she’s starting to see the pattern in how the first wave of thought swamps Chris’ own thoughts until he can focus enough to force it into more manageable streams.

Pollard, meanwhile, is scanning with one arm outstretched, keeping a weather eye on both the readings and Chris’ expression.

The moment Michael can feel Chris’ mind returning to an even keel, some of the strain lessening and order returning, the readings must capture something for Pollard nods, satisfied.

“It levelled out?”

Chris blinks a couple of times, reorienting himself, then nods. “Indeed.”

“Comparing these readings now to when you woke up the first time yesterday,” Pollard says, tapping through her padd, “I would estimate that it’ll only be two or three more days of this kind of high intensity input. Your sensitivity is already dropping measurably.”

“Thank you, Tracy.” Michael smiles at her. “That’s good news.”

Pollard nods, then turns back to Chris. “Are you ready for a third mind? Commander Saru has kindly agreed, since he already greeted Commander Burnham earlier. Commander Nhan is also standing by.”

Chris and Michael realise at the same time how much effort Pollard is putting into making him feel as much at ease as the situation allows – Nhan is the person on Discovery he’s known the longest and Saru is someone he interacts with regularly. Both are only a rank below him, which also makes things easier.

He nods again. “Appreciated, Doctor.”

There’s clearly something to familiarity, or perhaps simply practice, for though Saru is a third mind to cope with for Chris, he gets his mind under control faster this time, just like Michael had.

Chris also notices that Saru’s mind feels a little different, though he adds the observation he suspects the Kelpien’s mind would have felt different before his Vahar’ai – less sharp, perhaps.

Michael files that away for later consideration, following Chris’ lead in focusing outward.

“Captain,” Saru greets, looking Chris over.

Michael blinks, as for a moment it almost seems like she’s looking at Chris through Saru’s eyes, a different colour spectrum, sharper contours and more depth detail.

Chris casts her a glance, but is focusing most of his attention on Saru.

“Mr Saru, thank you for agreeing to come. Everything good with the ship?”

“It is indeed – we have not suffered any mishaps in your absence.”

Chris smiles. “Glad to hear it. And you’ll have the run of it for a while longer until this” – he waves his hand towards his heads to illustrate – “has worn off.” His smile goes wry. “Though I’m guessing I’ll be back to doing paperwork in no time.”

“You _will_ rest for at least the remainder of today, Captain, Commander,” Pollard intervenes, managing to inject an impressive amount of threat into a single word. “Light duties from tomorrow, but I’d advise you to stay out of crowded areas for a while.” She fixes first Chris then Michael with a pointed look, the force of her mind’s intensity like a battering ram. “You’re both sensible people when you choose to be – watch your limits.”

That’s actually something of a veiled compliment, Michael thinks, feeling pleased surprise from Chris too.

Chris graces her with a smile that’s almost impish, highlighting dimples Michael definitely doesn’t stare at. “Cross my heart, Doctor.”

Michael just nods, thinking that’ll do from her.

Pollard crosses her arms, clearly not entirely convinced. “Just come back here if you’re struggling with the constant input. I’ll call Commander Nhan in, and if you’re both fine with another mind in the mix, I’ll release you into the wild.”

That gets her a frankly intriguing mental image of Chris galloping in the desert on a horse, tinged with a certain amount of ironic amusement at the phrasing. She resolves to ask him about it later, in favour of concentrating now to hopefully weather a fourth mind invading the isolation chamber.

Nhan enters, and Michael’s first impression is that she thinks like a _battering ram_. Thoughts from A to B to C in a direct line, with everything else a net in the background from which thoughts are occasionally drawn into the ram’s progress. She wonders whether it’s a Barzhan thing or a Nhan thing. Then she realises, with pleased surprise, that her first thought was about Nhan’s style of thinking and not about being overwhelmed by yet more input, so something in her brain must be getting used to all this.

Fortunately, Nhan is focused on Chris and not paying attention to Michael’s abstracted expression.

“Number One will be _very_ interested to hear about this,” she grins, making Chris wince theatrically.

Or at least she’s pretty sure it’s because of Nhan’s words – his mind seems steady again after the temporary roil.

“Don’t pull your punches now,” he grouses, but if Michael can hear the playfulness in his voice then so can Nhan. “I’m _fine_ , as you can see.”

Nhan’s eyebrows twitch. “You were unconscious in a shuttle drifting in the middle of nowhere with blood on your face. Who do you think cleared the shuttle?”

This time, Chris’ wince is very much real. His expression gentles as he looks at Nhan, holding her gaze as something passes between them that not even direct access to his mind lets Michael decipher entirely.

He smiles, lop-sided. “I will endeavour not to accidentally engage in first contact with a telepathic species again.”

Nhan nods once, sharply, and Chris turns to Pollard. “So, release into the wild then? Or do I need to howl first?”

Pollard gives him an ironic look. “You’re good to go from my end.”

“Then there’s only one more thing to settle beforehand. We need to discuss how to handle this situation,” Chris says, disquiet sloshing around his mind that Michael is hard-pressed to stop from trickling into her own thoughts. “I would prefer to lay it all out to the crew and let people make their own choices about approaching us, but I’m not sure it would be practical. And it would set a bad precedent for naturally telepathic visitors or future crewmembers.”

Saru tilts his head, hands clasped. “I concur. It is part of Starfleet training to accept telepathy in others. I daresay the crew would trust both you and Commander Burnham to respect their thoughts as much as you can.” He turns to Doctor Pollard. “There is no indication that their new state could be harmful to others?”

Pollard shakes her head with reassuring alacrity. “None. What they can’t currently control is the passive reception of thoughts – as long as they don’t attempt to alter anyone’s mind, there should be no danger at all.”

Michael’s knee-jerk sense of revulsion at the mere thought is mirrored, even more strongly, by Chris and they shake their heads in unison. Michael certainly has no wish to tamper with anyone’s mind, regardless of whether her control would be good enough to do so in the first place, and given his own experiences, Chris wouldn’t countenance it either.

To their credit, no one questions their immediate refusal, just accepting it and moving on. It’s still a wonder to her sometimes, the trust of this crew she had first met as a convicted prisoner.

Warmth slips through her mind.

– _You have earned their trust_ –

He’s right – she has. And that she can recognise it these days is a victory all in itself.

“In that case,” Saru says, wrenching her mind back to the present, “I propose you inform the bridge crew and command team, but not the entire crew, unless further complications arise.”

Nhan raises her hand slightly, wiggling her fingers. “One problem with that – it’s all over the ship that we diverted to pick up the captain’s shuttle and found you two unconscious. Everyone knows something’s up.”

“And I, for one, am not prepared to lie if directly asked, unless there’s a _very_ good reason,” Chris adds, arms crossed in front of his chest.

Pollard shrugs. “Then don’t. Just don’t make a big deal out of it. Though I somewhat doubt that anyone is going to ask the Captain to his face why he was unconscious in a shuttlecraft.”

Michael has to hide a smile at the procession of memory flashes called to the forefront of Chris’ mind, all instances of his crew on the Enterprise sticking their noses into his business.

– _You’re still newer on Discovery_ – she sends, not bothering to try and veil her amusement. – _Some more of that captainly mystique is still lingering_ –

The look he shoots her is tinged with so much irony that she does laugh, drawing questioning gazes from Saru, Nhan and Pollard. She waves them off. “Don’t mind me. Our esteemed Captain is just being funny.”

That doesn’t seem to clear up much, going by continuing frowns, but they do agree that it’ll have to do as a course of action amid general shrugging.

*

Passing minds, it turns out, are easier to cope with than stationary people close to her. It’s not that there’s no input, but if she imagines her mind as a bubble and squints a bit, the analogy that minds which pass through at the further edge of the bubble impact less and swiftly disappear again and minds firmly within the bubble impact exponentially more the closer they get more or less holds up. It’s still very much equivalent to walking through a crowd of people all shouting at the top of their lungs, but the more she acclimatises the more she finds that she can think through the din and start to automatically corral all the unwanted input in one area of her mind to ignore it. Occasionally particularly loud thoughts punch through whether she wants them to or not. All in all, not pleasant, but survivable while the telepathy wears off enough to cease to be such a problem.

Michael’s first stop outside of sickbay is the gym. Her skin is buzzing a little unpleasantly and she feels she would benefit from clearing her mind through exercise before attempting to research her current condition.

Chris has gone off to find somewhere private, thinking he’ll contact Number One himself before the gossip reaches her from Nhan or god knows where else and reassure her that he’s fine no matter what those other sources may end up saying. She worries, he knows, for all her teasing.

Michael smiles to herself, appreciative of his ease with his other crew.

The gym is empty at this time of day, mid-shift. She hasn’t changed into appropriate workout clothes, but she strips out of her uniform jacket, reflexively shivering as cooler air meets her arms, and settles into the opening stance of one of the less demanding Suus Mahna katas.

As she progresses through the first few movements, stiffness slowly gives way to fluidity, easing her mind even as her heartbeat accelerates.

Unlike some human sports, Vulcan martial arts are not intended as a discipline to get lost in while practising. Instead, it serves two purposes, which Vulcans see as a logical way to approach sports: exercise is good for physical health of course, but the movements should become automatic once ingrained, at which point the exercise doubles as a time for a clear mind, floating above the body to be used at will.

Michael has no pressing problem she wants to examine right now, so she instead chooses to enter a light state of meditation, using the movement of her own muscles as a focal point.

She can feel Chris’ simple pleasure in talking to someone whose mind he can’t read and it occurs to her that a less noble captain might see an opportunity in this situation. To know what the crew are truly thinking about them? What concerns they have, what secrets? It could be invaluable information for a leader – and yet Chris would not countenance it.

There’s something pleased in the bend of his mind at her understanding of him, though he doesn’t stop his conversation to acknowledge it.

Michael refocuses on herself, not even really having noticed when her attention drifted to his mind, only to perk up again when her name comes up. Even second-hand listening to Number One’s probing, innuendo-laden questions about ‘kindred spirits’ sends embarrassment careening down her spine (less because of possible truth and more because someone she has never met is gossiping about her sex life with someone she’d quite like to _have_ a sex life with), arm swing stuttering mid-motion ( _unacceptable_ , her Vulcan teacher’s dry voice murmurs), and she wrenches her attention back with a wince.

They have not yet found a way to truly separate their minds – he is as clear at this distance as he was standing right next to her – but if she concentrates really hard on her own thoughts or something that’s right in front of her, she can limit her awareness of his thoughts.

Fortunately, she’s nearly through the kata and three more moves see her breathing deeply in the end stance. What she _needs_ is something to distract her mind, preferably some gnarly scientific problem. Given current circumstances, she’ll settle on making a start on the telepathy research she’s going to have to do anyway.

The heightened awareness brought on by the practice makes for an even less comfortable walk back to her quarters, mind flinching every time someone with a particularly enthusiastic thought process passes through her bubble.

She has to take a few deep breaths a few metres away from the door to brace herself for Tilly, waiting within.

To Tilly’s credit, she lets Michael change into a new uniform before waving a data padd in her direction.

“A list of essential reading on telepathy.” Before Michael can so much as open her mouth to thank her, she barrels on, “I know you could do this yourself and I know you’re going to do your own research, but I figured it could be useful to have a starting point. Save you a bit of time.”

Michael smiles at her, finding that with repeated exposure she becomes more and more used to the speed with which Tilly’s mind works. “Thanks, Tilly. I’ll find somewhere quiet to get started on this.”

*

Having appropriated one of the more out of the way science labs, Michael has several data padds spread out on a table – one for making notes, two with different texts on telepathy highlighted, while the table display shows the seminal Betazoid text for outsiders in larger font for easier scrolling and so she can draw out the diagrams of the brain included for explanatory purposes.

In his quarters, Chris is doing much the same. He’d tried his ready room, only to find that the close proximity to the bridge made for far too much mental input for comfort _or_ focus.

At the moment he’s cursing at Lerana Dea’s impenetrable prose – the insights are good, but the editor evidently too afraid of the author to put their foot down or blind to clean style. Overhearing a snippet of the text in his mind, Michael can only wince and feel fortunate that he’d got the first half of the alphabet when they divided texts for each to look at. It hardly makes sense to go over the same sources twice in the limited time they have available before it becomes a moot point.

Michael diverts her attention back to her own research with a sigh. Everything she has read so far points to one thing: there’s no substitute for years of mental training in the discipline of telepathy. While human brains in general are less suited for it, there are some human psionics who have proven that it’s possible to master the ability, but they all have in common that they were sensitive from a young age. If she and Chris had the time, they could likely get a pretty good grasp on it – the necessary basis of self-control is already there with both of them – but in a couple of weeks there’s nothing substantial they can do beyond applying some of the fundamental exercises taught to young telepaths.

The sound of the door sliding open drags her eyes away from a rather gory illustration of what can happen when someone untrained tries to send thoughts beyond their range. She’s been getting so used to feeling minds pass by that one of them halting outside the door hadn’t registered, but now that she’s paying attention the familiar mind tells her the identity of the visitor just before she steps through the door.

This time Tilly bears a container of food that smells heavenly and makes Michael realise abruptly that she hasn’t eaten anything for far too long. It softens the distinct feeling of being babysat.

Still – “Does Stamets know you keep skipping off to do favours for me?”

Tilly shrugs, hair bouncing. “It’s one of the advantages of not really having an assigned duty station anymore. Besides, no one’s going to come at me for helping you deal with SDT.”

Tilly’s mind is already offering up the meaning of the acronym, but Michael asks nonetheless, knowing it’s expected of her. “SDT?”

“Spontaneously-developed telepathy!”

Michael shakes her head, not hiding her smile. Only Tilly.

She draws the container of food towards herself, discovering a simple salad and roll that will do nicely for now.

“Anyway,” Tilly continues, “Stamets has been distracted.”

As anyone would be, though Michael frowns a little at the images of a dejected, grieving Stamets that rise to the forefront of Tilly’s mind. Michael herself had been busy away from Engineering for most of the time since Culber died, so she hadn’t quite understood the breadth of Stamets’ devastation – which is hopefully now eased by Culber’s miraculous return.

It does make her wonder, though, what such a loss would be like. The few times she’d run into him recently he had looked like a man whose light had been snuffed out. It brings a mirroring sorrow just to see it, but Michael had never felt a loss so large, lacked the necessary context –

– _I’m not sure that’s true_ –

It takes her a moment to recognise Chris’ voice, it had inserted into her stream of thought so cleanly.

– _What?_ –

– _That you never suffered a loss of that magnitude_ –

He doesn’t continue the thought verbally, but a picture of Philippa appears in his mind, younger there than Michael had ever known her, a little softer but no less sharp. She hadn’t realised until now that he knew of the original Philippa’s death, mourned her – he isn’t usually one to play his cards so close to his chest, orders or no orders.

In her own mind he finds memories of her birth parents, dimmed now with time but still bittersweet.

How Chris manages to convey a nod without any physicality is beyond her, his voice infinitely gentle – _You did not love them less because it wasn’t romantic love, Michael. We simply often spend more time in close proximity with romantic partners in our adult life. It leads to a bias in thinking_ –

Michael examines that, turning it over in her mind. Had she looked like Stamets after either of those deaths? Empty? She had had purpose still, hadn’t she?

Chris’ voice in her head is superbly dry, though strangely none the less gentle for it. Telepathic communication seems to be capable of a little more emotional nuance than aural speech.

– _After Philippa’s death you entirely reconciled yourself to spending the rest of your short life in a prison cell and you didn’t even care_ –

– _I’d also just started a war_ – Michael protests, but Chris doesn’t feel convinced.

“Heeello, Michael? Anyone home?”

A hand is waving in front of her face and Michael abruptly becomes aware that her fork is frozen in mid-air. She lowers it back into the salad.

“Apologies, Tilly.”

Tilly is still frowning at her. “So what is it with the constant spacing out? I thought you had better control of it now, or Pollard wouldn’t have let you out of sickbay.”

“I do.” Michael hesitates, but this is _Tilly_ and she’s going to need someone to confide in, now and afterwards. Besides, past experience has shown her friend would wriggle it out of her sooner or later regardless of Michael’s intentions to keep the information to herself. “I was talking to Chris.”

For a second Tilly’s expression remains blank, then it brightens. “ _Chris_ ,” she repeats in the Voice. The one that always spells trouble for Michael.

“The captain,” Michael confirms needlessly.

Tilly’s grin widens, now closer to unholy glee territory than is quite comfortable, given the subject. “How come you’re having mental chit-chat with _Chris_ , Michael, do tell.”

Michael shoots her a quelling look that has zero effect on Tilly. “I accidentally created some kind of link between our minds when we encountered the alien species. We needed an anchor and there was nothing else available.”

She doesn’t mention just how much of it had been pure instinct, pure luck that it had _worked_ and not done damage to either of their minds instead of helping.

Tilly shakes her head, eyes still bright, and says “Only you, Michael” in much the same tone as Number One had when she’d said the exact same thing to Chris. They really are a pair.

Tilly leans forward, planting her elbows firmly on the table. Michael automatically moves her salad before it’s at risk of having curly read hair deposited in it.

“So, what’s it like?”

“Well,” Michael says drily, “for one thing he can hear everything _I_ hear.”

But Tilly only waves that away. “Eh, the captain knows I’m a curious busybody. A narrow-minded ensign is a boring ensign. Dish.”

The curiosity in Tilly’s mind is palpable to her senses, but it’s the underlying concern for Michael that decides her.

Michael frowns, fingers skimming over the surface of the table. “I’m not sure I _can_ describe it, Tilly, not to anyone who isn’t telepathic themselves. In that first moment… it was like I saw all of him, his mind, his spirit, just as he saw mine. It’s settled down a little since then – he’s just there, at the back of my mind.” She tries to lighten it a little. “Offering running commentary when appropriate.”

“Is it intrusive?” Tilly asks, interest dimmed in favour of concern.

Michael shakes her head. “Not really. I would’ve thought so, before, but it just… is. And he’s…”

She doesn’t know how to say that it’s _Chris_ , who understood her even before this happened and now does so better than anyone else she has ever known, who doesn’t push yet puts her thoughts into perspective. Whose mind feels so warm when he thinks about her.

“Maybe it would bother me more if it were permanent, but for a few days it’s fine.”

She knows Tilly doesn’t understand – it hardly tallies with Michael’s usual stance of privacy, privacy, privacy, but it’s the best explanation she can muster.

In the ensuing silence, Michael dedicates herself to finishing the food as Tilly thinks it through, absently twiddling with the ends of her hair. The more of Tilly’s musings about Michael’s private life she can tune out, the better.

“You’re not sad,” Tilly finally says, an odd note in her voice, “but you’re not jumping for joy either. Has your… interest resolved itself?”

Michael looks up from chasing the last limp bit of lettuce. She should’ve known Tilly wouldn’t let it lie. Ever since she’d become aware of Michael’s interest in their captain, she’d been pushing for her to do something about it, while Michael – knowing that he likes her but unable to tell whether it went beyond mere liking – had prevaricated.

Now she knows, they both know, exactly how they feel about each other. Once she’d contextualised his warmth and compared it to her own feelings… there’s really no reason to doubt anymore. They just hadn’t outright talked about it; that first tacit agreement to let the matter lie for now had turned into a self-perpetuating cycle of avoidance quite without either of their input. They’d had other things on their minds and telepathy… it makes normal communication seem less necessary. They’d already felt it in each other’s minds, why verbalise it? Emotions are so hard to translate into words as it is.

That, she now realises, is a trap that more experienced telepaths likely know to avoid.

Chris’ presence in the back of her mind grows sharper, signalling his attention.

– _We should talk about it_ – she sends, feeling his answering agreement. – _But not now?_ –

– _It wouldn’t feel right to start something while our minds are altered_ – There’s a certain amount of wistful regret alongside the conviction, which he doesn’t try to hide. – _A few days more shouldn’t matter too much, in the grand scale of things. We already have more certainty than the average human ever does_ –

Michael thinks of the Enterprise, waiting to welcome her captain back as soon as their mission is concluded, and finds she doesn’t quite agree with that, but she _does_ agree with the original point, so she nods. He can’t see it, but she can’t break herself of the habit to signal some things physically.

– _Tabled, not abandoned_ –

Amusement threads his mental voice when he points out – _You might want to reassure Ensign Tilly that she hasn’t thrown you into a spiral of grief with her question_ –

Michael blinks dry eyes, hoping she’ll learn to blink while occupied in her mind before her eyes truly start to complain, and reaches out to put her hand on Tilly’s arm.

“We will sort it out once the telepathy has worn off.”

Tilly breathes a sigh of relief and Michael answers the question bubbling at the forefront of her friend’s mind.

“Promise.”

*

Though her logical mind points out the two things are hardly the same, it still strikes her as rather unfair that she’s still so tired now after having spent a large proportion of the last few days unconscious.

Hiding a yawn behind her hand, the act of putting on sleepwear already enough to signal to her brain that sleep is imminent, she glances at Tilly, who’s getting ready for bed humming under her breath. Sparkly notes of pleasure in her mind note that it’s been a lonely few days while Michael wasn’t there with her in the evening.

“Good night, Tilly,” Michael says out loud, her heart full.

The comfort of her own bed washes through her, muscles relaxing. She closes her eyes, expecting to fall asleep as quickly as she usually does after years of training.

But there’s Tilly’s mind brushing against hers from the side, still a little bubbly. After a while she becomes used to it, the prickling awareness receding into the general flow of her own mind without distracting her. In his quarters, Chris is also preparing for bed, thoughts hazy with tiredness. Tuning that out, too, Michael shifts to resettle the sheet covering her.

She’s just about to drift away, when a group of crewmen passes by her door, their minds exploding into her awareness with all the subtlety of a sun gone nova. Groaning internally, she can do little but wait it out – several people’s minds at once are too much input for her to ignore or lock out.

Finally, they move on and this time Michael manages to fall into a light doze before another passing mind jolts her awake again. Burying her head in the pillow in frustration has no effect at all on what her mind can perceive but she does it anyway, wincing her way through several more people passing in her range of awareness.

Tilly is fast asleep already when Michael finally gives up, casting the sheet aside to slip into her boots and tiptoe out of their shared quarters.

The trip to sickbay passes in a haze so tired that she doesn’t even mind the startled glances she collects from the people she passes on her way.

She’s weary enough she almost misses her sense of Chris strengthening, but she clocks it just before he rounds the corner, approaching sickbay from the other side. Of _course_ he wouldn’t have an easier time sleeping than she did.

They exchange a rueful glance.

Michael is thoroughly grateful that Pollard is the one on shift again when they enter, even if the doctor’s eyebrows threaten to escape her forehead when she catches sight of them both.

“What is it now?” she asks, gruff but not unkind.

“It’s impossible to sleep with minds wandering past,” Chris says bluntly. Michael now knows that the thin line between his eyebrows indicates he’s fighting a headache, though he keeps trying to cushion her from it.

Michael nods her agreement.

Pollard sighs, putting aside her tablet. “We should perhaps have anticipated this. Until your sensitivity wears off a little more you’re going to be mentally wide open even when you’re trying to sleep.”

The strong _no shit_ feeling radiating from Chris almost makes her smile, and even Pollard looks momentarily amused at his expression.

“I can have beds set up in the isolation chambers, unless…” Pollard looks between the two of them, voice and expression entirely neutral when she continues, “Do we need _two_ beds?”

It takes Michael’s tired mind a moment to catch up to what Tracy is saying, but when it does embarrassment immediately rises. Her immediate instinct is to demure – wanting to sleep snuggled up to her captain is hardly appropriate, telepathic bond or no telepathic bond – except that it’s literally impossible for her to lie to Chris right now and he can read her quiet yearning as easily as she can feel that he’s the opposite of opposed to this plan. Chris takes comfort from touch in a way Michael has never learned.

Still, he doesn’t answer Pollard, sending a vague sense of expectancy towards her. He’s of the unshakeable opinion that this step has to come from Michael, both for Pollard’s peace of mind and his own.

“One bed is fine,” Michael gets out, voice a little hoarse.

Pollard clearly notices, but much to her relief elects not to comment on it.

*

Michael falters on seeing the camp bed – some kind soul had dug out a slightly larger than standard one from storage – on the floor of the isolation unit. Chris sends a pulse of reassurance to her mind, a warm but careful hand landing on her shoulder blade.

The door shuts behind them with some finality, the receding impression of Pollard’s mind suddenly lost. She can feel her sighs of relief mirrored in Chris, her mind following the sensation of the line between his brows finally smoothing out at the ‘blessed quiet’.

“Nothing will happen you don’t want to happen, Michael.”

Chris’ voice is as steady as his gaze when she turns to look at him, open but uncompromising on her comfort. She feels silly all of a sudden – she knows they’re not going to have sex on the floor of a monitored isolation unit; she knows he’s a good man who wouldn’t take advantage of her either way; she knows he’d rather hurt himself than her. Nothing they could do here would be more intimate than what’s already happening in their minds.

There’s nothing to be afraid of.

He smiles at her, and for a heartbeat she gets lost in the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. She’d noticed the dimples of course – who _hadn’t_ – but there remain more small things for her to discover and be delighted by.

Chris shakes his head. “You’re one to talk.”

His warm feelings for her are always there, but now they swell until Michael’s breath hitches, skin prickling at the reminder of his regard. It’s strangely easy to forget something that’s always there and Chris seems to be as steadfast in feelings as he is in everything else. But they’d said they’d talk about it later, hadn’t they?

She smiles at him, finally heading for the bed. She’s too tired to continue a proper conversation now, and she feels Chris’ agreement washing through her mind. She’s already in her sleep clothes, so she lies down on her back, blanket tugged up to her shoulders and waits for him to settle. A remnant of tension lingers in her jaw, but Chris moves with careful yet relaxed precision, sliding under the blanket next to her with minimal touching.

It takes Michael less time than she would have expected to get used to someone else breathing near her, another person’s warmth along her side. It’s not something she’s ever had, beyond the occasional post-coital night, but Chris is already in her mind and having him physically near feels like an inevitable next step. Now that she’s allowing herself to relax, barriers she isn’t even consciously aware of coming down even further, the comfort she feels in his presence truly becomes plain. It’s a brief, silent struggle, soundly resolved in one direction that has her inching further into his side until their arms and legs are touching under the blanket. Chris’ pleased acknowledgement alone would’ve been worth it, but _she_ likes the contact, too, for all its newness and the lingering sense that they really shouldn’t be taking even this step while their minds are altered beyond their control.

Chris’ contribution to the question is the equivalent of a mental shrug, but he does reach out to briefly squeeze her hand in reassurance. They’re both tired and she’s far too comfortable right now to really engage with the topic.

His thoughts quiet, first going muzzy with almost-sleep then flattening out into true rest.

She drifts off not long after.

*

_A distant part of her knows she’s still sleeping, body lax on a camp bed on Discovery. That’s what logic says. Everything else looks around the lakeshore and the fortress looming in front of her and has trouble believing it’s not real. She can feel warm wind on her face, smell the dryness of the ground. A group of Starfleet officers is walking towards the settlement, bright yellow, red and blue uniforms standing out in the stark landscape._

_She blinks and she’s inside a courtyard, in the middle of a fight. Her hands grasp for a phaser that’s not there, but no one is paying attention to her. Several of the Starfleet crew are prone on the ground, bleeding – dead or unconscious._

_Her gaze is drawn to the man in gold, fighting with the largest of the attacking warriors, whose bearing is so familiar. In his struggles, he turns and their eyes meet. Emotions flood through her mind that she knows not to be hers. A part of her had already known it would be Chris, but she’s never seen such a bleak look in his eyes. The despair she can feels so strongly that she can almost taste it is mirrored there. The attacker roars, readying to strike with his heavy axe –_

Michael wakes, gasping. It takes a second for her mind to reorient, but as soon as it does she turns, hand flailing out to find Chris’ bare arm, warm under her fingers. He’s eerily quiet, despite his open eyes. She doubts he sees the ceiling, which gives off a little bit of light to avoid the room being pitch black.

“Chris?” she rasps, the question also echoing down their connection. His mind is feeling strangely floaty, unmoored.

She curls her fingers in tighter, reaching out with her other arm to rest a hand on his chest, over his heart.

“Here and now,” she says, voice stronger now, and finally his eyes move to find hers.

“My subconscious is a real winner,” Chris mutters, something bleak still lingering around the edges of his mouth. Still, he moves his hand to cover Michael’s fingers on his chest, squeezing a little. Perhaps she should move her hand now that he’s back with her, but she finds she doesn’t want to. The pulsing of his heartbeat under her fingertips is comfortingly steady.

He shifts a little so she doesn’t have to crane as awkwardly. He doesn’t move his hand. “Did we know something like this would happen?” He stops. “What _was_ this, come to think of it?”

Michael shakes her head. “A shared dream?” she offers dubiously. It had felt rather too _clear_ to be a dream, and Chris had _seen_ her while caught within it.

“Not a dream I’ve ever had,” he agrees, frowning. “More like a memory replay. Except for your presence, of course.”

Michael doesn’t even realise she’s tapping her fingers on his arm as she thinks until he twitches, sensitive. She stills, suddenly hyper-aware of the feeling of fine hair and smooth skin beneath her hand.

“It was… accurate?” she asks, more to distract herself than because she doubts his word, but he nods nonetheless, a strand of grey hair falling over his forehead, loose from sleep.

Michael averts her gaze, but there’s nowhere safer to look in this bare room. A little bit of amusement creeps into the feeling of him in her mind, and she glares.

– _Just nice to not be the only one_ – his voice sounds in her head, and the already weak glare falters at the implications.

“Are you trying to distract me from whatever just happened?” she demands, and his smile goes softer, conciliatory.

“I wouldn’t dare – keep on theorising, Science Officer Burnham.”

She scowls at his teasing, but that, too, fails when she looks at his soft features, the mussed hair, the dimples around his smile – all of which serve to make him seem strangely innocent in the dim light.

No sooner has she thought that than he starts laughing, and if laughter is infectious normally, it has nothing on laughter accompanied by a telepathic echo of mirth. She starts laughing too, bending over with the force of it until she’s half lying on his chest, still giggling.

It’s a good thing she doesn’t have to be professional with him in private anymore, because this is the furthest from it she’s ever been.

Eventually he murmurs, “If this happens every time we sleep, we won’t get much of it.”

The dry observation recalls her to their present predicament and Michael sits up, ignoring the loss of warmth. “Particularly if the focus is on unpleasant memories.”

“Why would it be?” he challenges, eyes glinting in the half light. “The telepathy itself isn’t a driving force – it only shows what the subconscious is already concerned with.”

“Bad memories have a statistically greater hold on our minds,” Michael counters. “We remember bad experiences from childhood much more clearly than good ones. It makes evolutionary sense – the mind needs to learn from bad experiences.”

Chris sighs, a little mournful with it. “And dreams are rarely entirely pleasant.” He sits up too, leaning against the wall at his back. Michael had been too tired earlier to consciously register that he had left her the outer side with a clear route to the door without complaint. “Why did you get pulled into it? And why was it so clear? My dreams are usually much more disjointed, less linear.”

“We can assume that the… connection between us dragged me in.” Michael draws the blanket tighter around her hips. “In sleep, whatever conscious limits we can set our telepathy is relaxed. I don’t know why it was so clear. Maybe my arrival made it into a performance of sorts?”

Chris doesn’t like that thought at all, she immediately feels, but doesn’t dismiss it out of hand.

“Either way, there is nothing we can do about it.”

Nothing Michael can think of, anyway. Her research yesterday hadn’t revealed anything particular useful.

Chris nods, resigned, and settles back down on the bed again. “We should try to get some more rest.”

That’s sensible, and if Michael is a little apprehensive about sharing another dream, then he’s kind enough not to react to it.

*

She wakes in the morning, later than her usual wont but refreshed for it, without having endured another memory sharing while asleep. Chris is up and stretching, his back popping audibly as he raises his arms to the ceiling. His movement is likely what had woken her.

 _Getting old_ , his mind sighs and Michael shakes her head. He’s hardly old by human standards, and she now has first-hand experience with just how fit his physique is. Chris keeps himself in better shape than some crew members much younger than him.

The pleased tingle that slips through him at her appraisal makes her cheeks flush, and she busies herself with folding up the blanket on the camp bed into a perfect rectangle.

When she’s done, they move towards the door together and Michael braces herself for whatever input would rush into her brain the moment their isolation is broken.

It’s not as bad as she’d feared. Only Doctor Pollard is near when the door opens, turning at their approach.

“Sleep well?” she asks, professional eyes giving them a once-over.

“Much better,” Michael replies, trying not to react to Chris’ agreeing rumble. “Until the telepathy wears off enough to sleep in our quarters we may need to come back every evening.”

Pollard waves a hand at the empty sickbay. “Be my guest. In the absence of some crisis involving biochemicals we’re unlikely to need the space.”

Chris nods at her. “Thank you, Doctor Pollard.”

As he heads for the door, Pollard catches Michael’s eye with a glance and a gesture. Chris clearly notices but doesn’t hesitate to leave, allowing them their illusion of privacy.

“I have to ask,” Tracy starts, expression and voice serious, “are you being in any way unduly influenced here? As the Captain – ”

Michael reaches out to touch Pollard’s arm, an unusual gesture for both of them that feels appropriate as she interrupts, “I appreciate the concern, Tracy, but I am not. Chris – Captain Pike – would never take advantage of a situation like this and I _know_ that now in a way I previously could only strongly believe.” She smiles, wry. “I should also mention that he _can_ hear anything I hear at the moment, and that he is grateful you thought to ask the question.”

Far more grateful than Michael is, in fact, she notes with a sense of puzzlement.

Pollard’s eyebrows rise. “Your minds are that intertwined? What about retaining any sense of privacy?”

Michael pauses, sensing that she should give this more than fleeting attention, especially as she’s getting a real sense of concern from Chris to accompany the question. She does think that she possibly _should_ be more upset about it than she is and in other circumstances would be, but after that first drinking in of his mind it just doesn’t… matter anymore, in a way she finds hard to put into words.

“If it were permanent, I would be worried about it,” she finally says, which is true, though perhaps not the whole truth. “But at the moment… it goes both ways, Tracy. It’s not unbalanced – I see as much of him as he does of me. It just wouldn’t be practical in the long-term.”

Chris’ concern dissolves into amusement, a sense of – _of course that’s what you’re prioritising_.

Pollard blinks at her, possibly trying to determine her sincerity, then shakes her head. “Just make sure to come to me or someone else if you do end up having concerns at any point.”

The wave of agreement from Chris is so strong Michael almost sways bodily with it.

She smiles at Tracy. “I will.”

Pollard lets her go with an only slightly dubious look – Starfleet doctors tend to be suspicious by nature, Michael has found, probably because officers’ self-reporting of ailments is woefully inadequate – hopefully reassured.

*

Michael has been doing her best to keep her awareness of what Chris is doing on the down low to make sure their reports don’t end up sounding identical, but when he lingers before adding a recommendation to send a fully telepathic ambassador to where their shuttle had idled to attempt second contact, she can’t help but take notice.

– _An excellent idea_ –

She hadn’t thought quite that far yet, her report emphasising the need to warn non-telepathic species of unguarded traverse of that section of space.

– _They didn’t seem hostile, after all_ – he returns and Michael can only agree. The consequences may have been regrettable on many levels, but she had sensed no ill-will in that brief contact.

Having mostly finished her own report by now, her self control gives in and she takes a peek at what he’s just written. She has never read one of Chris’ reports since they usually only go out to the admiralty in their original form, and she’s curious what his style is.

As a reflection of the man himself, she may have expected his reports to be solid with a little bit of whimsy to them, but she finds pretty bare language that’s not far from her own preferred style. There _is_ the occasional tart observation, but they are few enough in number that no reader is likely to complain and the more open-minded of the admiralty may well appreciate the reprieve from utter seriousness.

– _When it’s not aimed at them, anyway_ –

She startles at finding him so aware of her examination, but he seems amused at her appraisal.

– _I have to write so many reports, efficiency is the watchword_ –

Michael registers his chagrin, the irony aimed squarely at himself.

– _The glory of a captain’s life. They don’t tell you at the academy just how much of it is paperwork_ –

Michael, who had been Philippa’s second in command for years, knows the sentiment too well. Captains delegate as much of their paperwork to yeomen or seconds as possible (and humane), but there is always plenty that has to be done by the captain themselves.

Chris’ agreement resonates in her mind.

– _As I said: glory. Personally, I think it’s another way to weed out the young hotheads_ –

Michael herself has never much minded paperwork – it’s an essential part of any organisation’s fluid running and, frankly, Vulcan standards are much higher than the Federation’s could ever be when it comes to such things.

Chris catches a glimpse of the kind of comments she used to get on her study reports on Vulcan and shudders.

– _Well, that’s terrifying_ – He pauses. – _And explains a lot about Spock’s reports, come to think of it. He’s very… exact_ –

– _We were both trained in this manner_ –

He contributes another exaggerated shudder, until Michael pointedly remarks – _You would hardly have made it this far up the chain of command if you hated reports as much as you pretend to_ –

He grins. – _Absolutely do not tell Kat that or she’ll hound me for even more of them_ –

Michael snorts quietly to herself. As if the Admiral weren’t already aware of that.

His reply to that is an indistinct grumble, but for all his protests when they return to finishing their respective tasks, he’s no less dedicated than she. She has just filed her report when Chris wonders to himself whether he should forward a copy of his report to Section 31. They’re supposed to be sharing information, but their current state has nothing to do with their mission as far as they’re aware and he doesn’t particularly want to draw attention to it – not when he neither trusts Section 31 nor their liaison, who would surely be informed.

Michael startles, instinctively rebelling at the dark view of someone she once loved. Ash.

Her brain stutters on the name as if it’s encountered a literal snag to get caught up in. _Ash_. How had she forgotten about him until now? Here’s her chance to fully know him, to know whether her trust in him really was as misplaced as it had seemed for a while, whether she can trust him _now_. To know whether he’s truly Ash now, or if Voq still lurks in the shadows of his mind. To figure out what Section 31 is up to.

Except if she did this? Read his mind on such a deep level on purpose? She would hate herself. It’s one thing to accidentally ‘overhear’ far more than she is comfortable with or could ever know without these abilities. It’s entirely another to seek someone out in order to discover their deepest secrets.

Unconsciously, her legs have moved up to her chest until she’s cradling them with her arms, making herself small. That she even had the thought…

Ash may have hurt her, may have killed Culber while influenced by another mind, but he doesn’t deserve this.

And beyond that – does she even _want_ to know? Does she want to know how horribly skewed her judgment was, or that he really is a good man? What would she do with that information?

She’s so caught up in her own thoughts that she only registers Chris’ mounting concern in the back of her mind when the door buzzes for entry and she automatically says, “Open.”

He steps in, a furrow of worry high on his brow that doesn’t smooth when he catches sight of her. Reacting to her unspoken yearning – that still catches her off guard, it’s so new to her – he moves forward to sit on the bed next to Michael and draws her into his arms.

She hides her face in his chest and lets herself be comforted, his warmth steadying her even as he murmurs into her hair, “It’s all right, Michael. The impulse doesn’t shame you.”

But how can he say that? He, the pride of Starfleet, who always holds himself to a higher standard?

Chris snorts lightly. “Do you think I never have thoughts that are beneath what I aspire to be? We all have our flaws. And in this specific instance, I would be more surprised, even worried, if you _didn’t_ think about the implications. Who wouldn’t want to be certain?”

Underlaying that she feels his own roiling emotions. She had sensed his dislike of Ash when he first came aboard, before telepathy entered the picture, and had wondered at the cause. Everything she knew about Chris then said he dealt with people fairly, not based on hearsay, and even tended to think the best of people upon first meeting. That had very much not been the case with Ash.

Now, the conversation had brought his feelings to the surface and even if she’d wanted to avoid examining them, she couldn’t without the kind of drastic measures she’s hesitant about employing.

This was a less problematic kind of curiosity, at least. Sensing her struggle, Chris makes it easy for her and offers, so she looks.

At the top of the metaphorical pile is Chris’ deep distrust of Section 31 and dislike of what they stand for – or rather what they signify about the Federation. Ash falls into that simply by being part of the shadow organisation. Intertwined with this are his complicated feelings about Leland, who had once been his friend. They may have agreed to a truce after the Section 31 ship anchored Discovery in the mycelial network, but trust has eroded, and if Chris can’t trust a Section 31 member who he had known well once upon a time, a stranger is much less likely to invoke it.

In the middle lies Chris’ briefing about what had happened to the Discovery during the war, which had also featured a small section on the actions of Ash Tyler and Voq. He isn’t unaware of the limited amount of agency Ash had when he killed Culber, but he’s also deeply unimpressed by how Ash had acted before and after. There’s a deep-seated conviction in Chris that if he had _any_ cause to doubt his own mind, he would remand himself to medical supervision so fast people’s heads would spin because inadvertently hurting any of his crew because he doesn’t have full control over his actions is _simply unacceptable_. He’s also acutely aware of the effect of the man’s return on the crew who had been witness to the act.

Underneath it all, Michael startles to find _herself_. Section 31 and Voq, Chris could perhaps get over with sufficient proof of Ash’s good intentions in the present day (not that joining Section 31 is a good first step there). But there’s a deep well of unhappiness with the way Ash’s actions had impacted Michael that she had never even guessed at, only fed by his increasing insight into her own side of things. _He_ doesn’t think that he can fully forgive Ash for hurting her so deeply, for behaving so badly towards her, and Michael finds that… she finds it…

She doesn’t know what to think about that.

There’s a part of her that feels pleasure at his fierce defence of her, that is warmed by someone so unequivocally being in her corner, however natural it is to him. He had never known Ash and he does know her – loves her even, in a way she hadn’t let herself think about these last few days. And he hadn’t pushed.

A smaller part feels sad on Ash’s behalf. While her own trust in him is eroded and a renewal of their relationship impossible in her mind, she’s not one to easily forget feelings of any kind and her feelings for Ash had run deep and intertwined with their collective trauma to a point she can’t quite detangle the two. She finds she does still believe he’s at heart a good person – it’s simply a fact that’s not relevant to her anymore as it had once been.

Chris sighs quietly.

– _Even if you do not seek him out, there’s a chance you, or I, will come across him by accident_ –

That’s true. The ship isn’t so large as to make it likely she won’t see him at all for two weeks. And then there’s Chris himself, who still holds onto his reservations (whose judgment is, perhaps, in this matter, more clinical, more _logical_ ) and has at last three half-formed plans as to how he could confront Ash swimming at the back of his mind. None of which he’ll execute, for her sake, but they _are_ there.

“I’ll just have to… deal with that, if it happens,” she finally says, wincing at the hesitation she can hear in her own voice. But what else can she do? Her feelings about Ash aren’t going to grow any less conflicted overnight.

Chris nods sharply. “And I’ll be with you when you do.”

It’s an obvious statement really, given there’s no way his mind _couldn’t_ be there right now, but she knows that’s not what he means, and she finds she appreciates the reassurance.

*

Where the conversation about Ash had been hard, it’s the topic of Spock she wants to avoid at all costs. She can’t bear for Chris to see what she’d done to her little brother, the person he now calls a friend, nor the judgment that would surely follow.

It’s much easier said than done. Aside from the Red Angel mission, finding Spock is still their main priority and she rarely thinks of Spock these days without that feeling of crushing guilt, though she’s managed so far to avoid outright thinking of the scene that’s at the root of it.

Now that Michael is back to work, Spock comes up more and more often and she knows Chris has definitely noticed how off her reactions are in the matter. His concern is clear in his expression and mind, but so far he’s done her the favour of not pushing, since it must be equally clear to him that she doesn’t want to talk about it. Her mind must be putting up ‘DO NOT APPROACH THIS TOPIC’ warning signs all over the place.

As she tries to draw more sense out of his notes and wracks her brain for any hint as to where he could’ve gone to ground – she’s starting to think she should go to Vulcan herself, to talk to her foster parents at least – it becomes clearer and clearer that she can’t avoid the topic for the entirety of the projected two weeks they’re stuck with these telepathic abilities and she finds herself hating the circumstances for the first time since she saw their effect on Chris on that first day.

Chris’ concern spikes as he catches that thought, and that night Michael’s subconscious forces the issue.

She wakes, her mind still echoing with the hateful words she had spewed at Spock, Chris’ stricken expression as he had witnessed the scene clear in her mind’s eye. She feels cold, despite the warm blanket and warmer body next to her. For the first time the absolute silence of the isolation unit bothers her.

Briefly, she thinks about leaving (running away), but what would that solve? He knows now and she can’t avoid him, not while they’re so connected and not while he’s her captain. She doesn’t _want_ to avoid him.

Michael suddenly realises that Chris is awake, too, and is rubbing soothing circles into her arm.

She turns her head and the concern in his expression undoes her.

Anything she might’ve said disappears in a wave of quiet tears. This moment in her life has haunted her for years and she had never thought she would experience it this vividly ever again. The look on Spock’s _face_ , his devastation so very human. His confusion.

She becomes aware of murmuring in her ear, arms around her.

“It’s all right, Michael. Let it out. Let it all out.”

It calms her, even as she doesn’t understand why he’s still here, still comforting her. Spock is his friend.

A little bit of exasperation prickles in his mind, quickly subsumed by sympathy.

– _And you are someone I love. Did you truly think I would judge the actions of a frightened,_ brave _little girl?_ –

Michael draws in a wet, shuddering breath. Half her mind is entranced with the way he said ‘love’ so easily, out loud for the first time (well, not out loud, but _direct_ ). Matter-of-fact. The other half is still awash in shame.

“You _saw_ ,” she whispers. Using her raw voice feels more appropriate than easy mental speech. “You heard what I said. What I did to him.”

Chris shifts a little, drawing her further into his body until her head rests against his chest. She listens to his heartbeat, even and regular.

“You did say terrible things,” he acknowledges, and for all that she deserves to hear it something in her quails to hear him say it, “and Spock is the only one who can forgive their effect.” One of his hands comes to rest on her hair, warm and heavy. “But Michael – I _know_ what you felt in that moment. How scared you were for him and for your family, how much you hated every word. You were pushed into an untenable position by forces beyond your control. How can I not feel for that young girl?”

The words fall onto Michael’s psyche like gentle rain onto a gasping desert, paving the possibility for future blooming. Because she knows that he means it – his mouth might lie to her, but his mind can’t – and Michael is so _tired_ of guilt.

She has become used to trusting his judgment.

He can’t absolve her, but his acceptance goes a long way in healing a wound that had festered for far too long.

*

Michael is still bleary-eyed the next morning – shared mindscapes are all well and good, but if they keep bringing this much emotional baggage along for each of them, a full night’s sleep is going to become little more than a pipe dream – when she is called down to engineering.

“The power surge we experienced during that kerfuffle with the sphere is still causing some problems,” a grumpy Stamets informs her on arrival. His mind is impressively organised for a human, Michael judges, although the speed of his thoughts rivals Tilly’s. He’s also trying very hard to focus entirely on the problem in front of him because science makes sense and is much more productive than oscillating between joy at Hugh’s return and worry about his odd behaviour. “We need another pair of eyes for the diagnostic.”

He waves towards an empty workstation and Michael gets to work. The ship is broadly functional, but some of the subsystems are on the fritz, which could prove risky if anything else goes awry. She initiates a system reboot, but some of the issues will likely need manual adjustment.

Michael is running some calculations on possible interference from nearby stars, when Chris’ presence in the back of her mind thickens. She looks up to see him coming through the door, nodding at Stamets, who’s double and triple checking that the issues haven’t so far affected the spore drive console.

He comes to stand by her side, a prickling warmth along her arm, and casts a glance over the calculations on the screen. Chris doesn’t say anything, but Michael’s jaw slackens a little when his mind offers the answer to one of the calculations just as she comes to it herself.

“There’s no way you failed astrophysics,” she blurts out, pointing an accusing finger at his chest.

His expression doesn’t change, but unfortunately for him she can feel him laughing at her in her mind. She glares.

“Service records don’t lie,” he points out, still straight-faced.

Her glare deepens.

Chris accedes, lips twitching. “But they also don’t necessarily tell the whole story. I didn’t sit the exam and in that class that meant an automatic fail. I might’ve been able to re-sit, but I shipped out on the Antares three days later, so the timing just didn’t work out.”

Michael is about to ask _why_ he hadn’t taken the exam – she can’t imagine him skipping out without a very good reason – when she catches the flash of old sorrow, the memory of a funeral, and bites her tongue.

“That makes much more sense,” she says instead. “All your other grades were As and A pluses.”

He blinks, a hint of surprise leaking from his mind that she’d paid that much attention, then grins. “You _really_ didn’t like the inconsistency, did you?”

Michael crosses her arms, not ready to admit just how many minutes she’d spent wondering about it, except of course her mind had just done so for her. “It wasn’t logical.”

“Humans aren’t necessarily logical,” Chris muses, “though I take your point. Glad to have cleared up this little mystery.”

Michael returns most of her attention to the calculations. “What did you come down here for anyway?”

“Status update.” He shrugs. “Reno is swearing up a storm about blown relays, something about _just_ having fixed them, and the bridge would like an update.”

Michael raises an eyebrow. “Demoted to errand boy?”

“Eh, I’m versatile.” He leans his hip against the station. “So? You’re less likely to bite my head off for asking than Stamets.”

Seeing as Stamets is now muttering to himself under his breath as he checks the spore canisters, Michael can hardly argue with that assessment.

“The ship is functional, but there’re a couple of places that need fixing. Shouldn’t take longer than today.”

Chris straightens from his almost slouch – he doesn’t let himself properly slouch on duty – and nods. “Very good. Carry on then.”

Something niggles at her, and he’s not quite out the door when she calls after him mentally.

– _If you happen to run into Culber at any point, keep an eye out? Stamets seems to think he isn’t doing so well_ –

Chris doesn’t break his stride, both of them used to such contact now, but he does send acknowledgment mingled with worry that Michael shares. Culber’s return has been nothing short of miraculous, but there seems to be so little anyone can do to bridge the palpable distance between a man returned from the dead and the rest of the galaxy.

*

Reno turns up in the engineering bay not long after, collar half undone and scowling. Michael’s first impression of her mind is that it’s a disorganised mess, but a little more observation reveals that there _is_ structure to it – just not structure that anyone but Jett Reno can easily understand.

She makes a beeline for Michael. “You know a wrench from a soldering iron, right?” At Michael’s cautious nod, Reno gets a hold of her arm and starts towing her to the door. “Half the engineering ensigns caught the flu from Linus – can you sort out the last relay issue? I need to coordinate the rest of the lot, but I need someone who knows what they’re doing to change out some parts or this bucket of bolts will have even more issues than it already does.”

Michael looks back to find Stamets waving her on, evidently pleased to have her deal with Reno instead of having to do so himself. The way those two go at it, you almost can’t tell that they actually _like_ each other.

The faulty relay line is accessible through one of the smaller storage rooms. Some of the ships with a newer design, like Chris’ Enterprise, have a simplified relay grid that’s easily accessible at all points, but Discovery hasn’t had time for a major retrofit since it started getting hammered in the war.

Wearing safety gloves and goggles, Michael gets to work, prising the panel open to get at the damaged fuse connections. She has just cleaned the slag off the parts to see how much needs to be replaced, when Reno’s voice comes through the comm.

“Burnham, the grid is fluctuating! Get – ”

She doesn’t have time to react. The panel sparks just as she starts moving backwards, and blows.

Her impact with the wall doesn’t _quite_ make her lose consciousness, still aware of heat and blooming pain in her head and along her arms. Her vision greys.

Someone is shouting at her. In her? The sounds stubbornly refuse to resolve into actual words, the ringing in her ears drowning out all coherency.

Michael blinks, vision flashing in and out, aware of stickiness in her hair, on her face. Wasn’t she just replacing a damaged relay connector? There shouldn’t be sticky things in her hair.

– _Michael - to me, you’re - , keep_ –

There’s a voice in her head. Is that normal? There’s no one there with her.

– _Michael, focus on my voice! Come back_ –

But I haven’t gone anywhere, she thinks muzzily. I’m right here.

– _And here’s where we want you to stay. Help is on the way, just hang on_ –

She blinks again. She knows that voice. It’s familiar, comforting. Something clicks in her mind and she gasps, awareness rushing back in. Awareness which brings clarity, but also pain.

– _Chris?_ –

– _Yes, I’m here_ – Relief drips into her head, briefly eclipsing overwhelming worry. Neither of the emotions are hers. She’s too busy not crying from the pain, mostly because moving would probably be a bad idea right now.

Michael tries to force her breathing to even out, involuntary tears escaping the corners of her eyes at the effort, and her fingers clench on empty air.

Then there’s a hand on the side of her face, keeping her head braced and still even as a gentle finger wipes at her tears. But that can’t be right, she’s alone in the room unless you count scattered debris. She almost rolls her eyes out of her sockets trying to look at her own cheek, groaning at the stab of pain in her head even as she confirms what she already knows – there’s no hand there, just air.

She closes her eyes and feels it still.

– _How are you doing that?_ – she asks because who else could it be and gets a strained laugh in reply.

– _I don’t know. It just… happened when I thought about it_ –

The feeling of the hand fades, then reappears again.

There’s audible strain even in his mind voice, the feeling of divided attention as bodyless voices are talking to him somewhere that’s not here – _It needs a lot of concentration_ –

For a few more heartbeats she lies there, eyes closed, head throbbing in time with her staccato breaths. His phantom hand disappears again.

– _We’re outside, but the door is jammed_ – Chris reports and Michael almost whimpers. With most of her initial confusion abated, she doesn’t think she’s injured that badly, but _stars_ everything hurts. – _We’re going to cut our way through_ –

A buzzing starts up at the edge of her awareness, but she doesn’t try to move her head to look at the door. She needs a distraction.

– _Talk to me_ – she asks and his mind hums at her, eager to do something, anything to make her feel better.

– _Anything specific you want to hear about?_ –

Her mind blurts the first thing that comes into it. – _Aquila? Really?_ –

A burst of amusement lights up her brain, tinged with just a little rueful embarrassment. – _My mother’s idea of a joke. She wanted to tease dad about ‘Christopher’ being such a religious name by choosing something ridiculous and insisted that since it’s the middle name it’s not like I have to use it. You may have noticed that I do not, in fact, introduce myself with my middle name. She pretends to be appropriately chastened if it comes up these days, now that I’m a grown man_ –

– _But it fits_ – Michael’s spongy mind insists. – _Only the best, most favoured of people were placed in the sky as katasterismoi_ –

She feels Chris’ light touch as he lifts the meaning of the word out of her mind, alongside his trademark bashful humility with which he, quite vexingly, receives all praise – offered by concussed minds or not.

– _Earth mythology, Michael?_ – he asks, a little wry. – _Most would let their brain relax a bit after it were rattled inside their skulls_ –

The buzzing has intensified, a new source of light penetrating through her closed eyelids.

– _Salient facts_ –

His smile makes her feel warm, even if it’s just in her mind. – _If you insist. Just don’t go spreading the name around; I don’t need the added teasing_ –

She’s getting ready to get all puffed up in his defence, who’s teasing him, no one should tease him but her, clearly, when she realises two things in quick succession. The first is that he doesn’t actually mind, and she knows he doesn’t, even invites teasing from those who know him well because it’s proof that they wouldn’t hesitate to stand up to him when necessary. The second, much more exciting thing is:

– _Your initials spell CAP! Like Captain, just short_ –

Her mental feel of him has gone soft, filled with all those things that, in her current less inhibited state, she doesn’t fear adding up to love.

– _You really are out of it, huh. We are nearly through, love. Just one more minute_ –

The moment the hole in the door is big enough, Tracy is through and into Michael’s field of vision, administering a hypo before Michael can make her mouth move to shape a greeting. The pain numbs within seconds and Michael’s breathing steadies. Less pain brings more mental input, and she follows along with Tracy’s lightning quick assessment of her state.

Recognising the increased alertness in Michael’s eyes, Tracy smiles. “All right then, let’s get you out of here.”

And then Chris is there, too, reassuringly solid like his hand wasn’t as he helps Tracy lift her. Her head throbs in protest even through the painkillers, but Michael bites her lip and keeps the unbecoming whimper behind her teeth.

A stretcher is waiting outside the door and she’s whisked away to sickbay. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Chris’ aborted movement, as if he wanted to fall in beside the stretcher before he remembered that he’s got an engineering emergency on his hands.

His thoughts confirm it and Michael feels the need to comfort him. She knows duty, respects adherence to it.

– _I’ll be fine, Tracy will take care of me_ –

She’s already around the corner when he answers, still subdued. – _Yes, she will. I’d still prefer to be there. Get underfoot, make everyone annoyed with overbearing captains…_ –

– _Another time. Just calm down Tilly, will you?_ –

– _I’ll do my best_ –

As Tracy starts treating her in earnest, Michael can’t help but reflect that she’s spending far too much time in sickbay. Chris’ emphatic agreement is, she points out, just a tad hypocritical, given his own propensity to literally jump on overheating phasers. Not to mention several other near-death situations with such highlights as getting himself nearly smashed to death in an asteroid field and almost ending up twisted like a pretzel by being a nose-length away from the barrier to the mycelial network.

There’s a pause, a brief mental blankness from his side that has her frowning. Tracy is finishing up with her head wound and turns to peeling off the gloves that had protected her hands.

– _You are not the one who just had to wash my blood off your hands_ –

Chris’ mental voice is uncommonly quiet, barely more than a metaphorical whisper, and tight with restrained emotion. She can feel him tamping down on fear and even a little anger, breathing through it as he turns to answer a question/demand from Reno. It occurs to her that he somehow managed to suppress his darker emotions during the crisis to a degree that she didn’t notice them, had _projected_ steadiness and relief to cover them. Uninjured, she would’ve noticed the layering, but woozy and glad to cling to his comfort, she hadn’t.

She thinks about _why_ , and shudders. He must’ve witnessed the accident through her mind – he probably _felt_ her pain – too far away to help her physically, so he had offered what mental support he could, despite the strain and his fear for her.

Now that she’s being treated and out of danger, his mental control is slipping.

– _I’m sorry I didn’t realise how much of a strain this situation was for you_ – she sends, trying not to pay too much attention to Pollard running a regen unit over the burnt skin of her arms. If she did, she would remember that this would be hurting an awful lot without the painkillers.

Chris sighs in her head. – _It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have avoided the accident and Reno is lighting a fire under the engineering ensign’s butt who adjusted the energy flow without warning you first. He didn’t know anyone else was working on the relay, but he should’ve called in and waited for the go-ahead_ –

– _The accident wasn’t, no. But not considering your feelings?_ –

Fond exasperation trickles into her mind. – _Michael, you’re literally concussed right now because you went head-first into a wall_ –

She automatically shakes her head, earning an admonishment from Tracy to keep still.

– _Nonetheless_ –

– _Cut yourself some slack_ – He sounds tired now, his constantly split focus as he talks to her and brings his captain’s authority to bear on the engineering department taking its toll. – _Rest. I’ll see you tonight_ –

It would be churlish to keep distracting him, so she sends her agreement, just remembering not to nod. Tracy is about ready with her injury readout and prognosis anyway, and she should give the doctor her full attention.

*

Having been told by Doctor Pollard quite sternly to lay still and let the biobed do its work because burn treatment is one of the more complex medical procedures that she could quite easily “fuck up” if she doesn’t do as she’s told, Michael spends the rest of the day in sickbay, trying not to go out of her mind with boredom.

Chris is still busy with engineering, so she doesn’t want to distract him – besides she gets the distinct sense that he needs a little time to himself to get back to an even keel – and she balks at reading other people’s minds simply to alleviate boredom, feeling that that’s going a step too far.

After a while one of the nurses takes pity on her and hands her a data padd to amuse herself with at least, which means she can check on the status of the ship. According to the most recent, briskly-worded memo by Jett Reno, only the power line Michael was working on is still out of commission, pushing the timetable for getting everything in working order again back a few hours (and adding the clean-up of a wrecked storage room to the list), but there hadn’t been any catastrophic consequences to the relay overload.

By the time Chris meets her in front of the isolation unit looking tired, the cut along her hairline is fully closed and the only reminder of the burns is the tender new skin on her arms.

Clearly aware of that, Chris contents himself with gripping her shoulder tightly for a moment, seeming to want the physical connection. As soon as the door closes on any prying eyes, he sags a little, shoulders rounding as he draws a hand through his hair.

“Well, that’s been a _day_.”

He marches over to the hidden drawer in the wall that holds his sleepwear – soft, long pants and a worn t-shirt, much like Michael’s own choices – Michael politely turning away as he changes into more comfortable clothes.

For the first time since this whole thing started, she feels actively awkward in his presence. She wonders whether she should apologise again, but they’d already covered that and he’s still here and tired and worn in a way that prickles unhappily in the back of her mind. She’s beginning to realise that telepathy can’t entirely fix her social ineptness – she’s still unable to find the right words in an emotional situation. Or figure out whether she _should_ be saying anything right now.

Chris steps up next to her, a warm hand landing on her arm. She looks over to find him no less weary, but a little softened now that he’s wearing comfortable clothes and his hair is mussed from pulling his shirt over his head.

“It’s all right, Michael. I’m just tired.”

Which, undeniably, is still her fault, between the chaos today and the disruptive dreams two nights in a row. His gaze takes on a warning edge, and she mentally corrects herself. Related to her, but not her fault.

He nods, satisfied, and when they both lie down, he draws her close just like he did yesterday. They’re both tired enough that swift sleep precludes any further brooding.

*

A buzz and Chris shifting next to her wake her before their joint morning alarm, the dimness briefly lightening as he turns on a padd.

Blearily she rasps, “Computer, time?”

“0400.”

Chris briefly rests a hand on her shoulder as he sits up. “Go back to sleep, Michael,” he whispers. “I need to go take care of something.”

She can’t quite help the little bereft noise that escapes her when his hand disappears and he rises, instinctively drawing the blanket closer around herself to compensate.

The feeling of his determination in her mind hitches, but he doesn’t falter in pulling his boots on. Whatever he’s going to do doesn’t seem to be official, for he doesn’t bother putting on his uniform before he vanishes out the door, a sense of apology lingering in her mind.

Michael turns over onto her other side, fully intending to go back to sleep for an hour and a half, but although she’s hardly feeling awake, her curiosity is pricked now, moving sleep farther and farther away.

When she seeks out Chris’ mind he greets her with a rueful acknowledgement that he should’ve known better than to think she’d just follow his instructions and go back to sleep.

Before she can settle on an appropriately sassy reply, he enters one of the observation rooms and Michael blinks a little, surprised to find that it’s Doctor Culber who’s standing in front of the large window, staring out into space.

Culber flicks a glance Chris’ way, something wry playing around his lips. Or at least that’s how Chris reads it – to Michael, looking through his eyes, Culber just looks tired.

“Tracy?”

Chris nods. “She’s worried about you.”

“And she sent _you_?”

The words are combative, but she can tell Culber doesn’t mean it as an insult. Chris can feel the man’s overwhelming tiredness, the belief that no one can help him cope with what’s happened to him, the brief spark of hope that people are _trying_ immediately snuffed out.

Chris shrugs, easy, and moves a little closer so he can look out at the nearby nebula as well. “You don’t know me – we don’t have any history, like you do with everyone else on this ship. If you want someone uninvolved to hear you out, offer a sympathetic ear, I’m your man.” His voice is still easy, unaffected, but Michael can feel just how much conviction goes into the next few words, how much desire to do right by this crew, _his_ crew – every single member of it. “I make it a habit to make myself available to every crew member, should they want to talk. That _includes_ crew members recently returned from the dead.”

Culber doesn’t say anything for a while. His mind is still shrouded in that impression of distance that feels unnatural – especially in a man like Culber, who normally exudes such a warm aura.

“Sympathy?” he finally asks, his voice scratchy. He hasn’t turned to look at Chris. “Shouldn’t I just be happy that I’m back? Pick up my old life like nothing happened, like everyone thinks I should?”

Taking his cues from the other man, Chris too is still looking outside, letting the beauty of space infiltrate his mind, support him through this precarious conversation.

“Things are rarely that straightforward,” he says evenly, and if Michael wasn’t literally privy to his thoughts she would never have guessed just how carefully he’s picking his words. “Traumatic experiences leave a mark, leave change. Whether you have changed so much that you don’t fit in your old life anymore is something only you can decide.”

It would almost be better if Culber’s mind reflected the pain so very visible in his eyes, not that pervading numbness.

“I don’t know how to move past it. How to decide.”

Now that Culber has turned, Chris meets his gaze openly. “It’s only been a few days. Give yourself time. Lean on your friends if you can. I’m no professional, I can’t show you the path to healing, but if you keep feeling like you’re drowning… there are many people who would like to help as they can, me included. Isolation can be damaging too.”

Culber snorts lightly. “I know all this, in my head. I’m a _doctor_. But I can’t quite make it apply to myself.”

Chris shifts on his feet, wondering whether to make the offer or not, then takes the plunge. “I’ll let you know the next time Admiral Cornwell is on board, which is probably not that far off given how things are going. She’s a real psychologist. Licenced and all.”

At Culber’s sharp glance, he holds up his hands, conciliatory. “It’ll still be your choice whether to approach her or not, but I want you to know the option is there.”

Culber’s expression remains shadowed, but there’s a slight give in his mind that gives Chris hope he’ll at least think about it.

“Pretty as this nebula is,” he says, smiling slightly, “I’m going back to bed. ‘Guzzling three cups of coffee to stay awake’ is a bad look for a captain, or so I’m told.”

Culber nods at him, abstracted, making no move to head to a bed himself. Chris sighs internally and leaves him to it.

It occurs to Michael, far too late of course, that perhaps she shouldn’t have eavesdropped on this conversation quite so blatantly. She’d have got the gist of it through Chris later anyway, unless he avoided thinking about it ever again, but there’s an intentionality here that prickles a faint sense of shame down her spine. This was the longest she’d ever played passenger in his mind for reasons other than talking to him – she’d been curious, so she’d listened, hadn’t really thought about the implications until this moment. Half asleep or not, that implies a level of comfort with these new abilities that she perhaps should not allow herself to fall into.

– _Boundaries_ – Chris agrees silently, wariness cloaking his mind. – _It’s a slippery slope. I, for one, am glad that it’s only going to be a few more days, if Doctor Pollard is correct_ –

Something occurs to her. – _At least no upsetting shared dreams today_ –

– _Things must be dire indeed if even our subconsciousnesses are giving us a break_ – he agrees drily, but she can feel his relief at the uninterrupted sleep.

Yet, he still opts not to return to the isolation unit for more sleep, but instead heads for his quarters to change into his uniform to properly greet the day. Michael sighs and gets up herself, none too keen on staying in the isolation unit by herself and feeling too awake for proper sleep at this stage.

She heads out into sickbay proper, expecting to dodge one person on nightshift at most, only to halt when she finds light spilling from Pollard’s office. Through the open door she can see the doctor bent over her desk, thoughts focused in a manner that Michael has found only comes when people are truly buried in their work.

She resolves to leave Pollard to it, having done more than enough snooping for the day, but just as she starts moving again, she catches her own name in Pollard’s mind just as the doctor looks up.

Pollard beckons her into the office.

“Early morning?” she asks, something wry around her lips as Michael settles herself in the other chair.

Michael shrugs. “I thought you would be asleep. Aren’t you off shift?”

“Something kept nagging at me.” Pollard rubs a tired hand over her face. “Do you have time for another brain scan?”

Correctly interpreting Michael’s mildly perturbed look, she adds, “It’s nothing bad, but I noticed something in your numbers that I want to confirm.”

And confirm it she does, going by the general thrust of her thoughts as Michael sits on the nearest biobed, though there’s so much medical terminology crammed into Pollard’s thought process that Michael has trouble following what exactly just happened.

“The telepathic markers in your brain are much less active than they were yesterday, before your head injury,” Pollard explains, pulling up two brain scans side by side on the screen so Michael can see for herself. “Did you notice decreased range or intensity?”

Frowning, Michael casts her mind back. “I did, but I thought it was the concussion.” She reaches out mentally, feeling for minds rather than specific thoughts. “And that’s still the case – I don’t think I’m getting much from beyond sickbay.”

Pollard nods. “That tallies with the data. You’re several days further along than I projected.”

“What do you think is the cause?” Michael asks, scrutinising the scans. She can see the difference, of course, one brain far more active than the other, but she doesn’t truly _understand_ it.

“The brain is tricky,” Pollard shrugs, “and brain injuries still routinely surprise us. Given the strange way you acquired the telepathy, I really couldn’t speculate as to why getting blown up accelerated the process of getting back to normal.”

Michael almost points out that ‘getting blown up’ is a bit overblown as a description, but bites her tongue. Arguing with medical personnel about semantics never gets anyone anywhere.

“Can you call Captain Pike here? I should scan him, too.”

Michael nods, but when she reaches out to him she finds him already on the way. He’d clearly picked up something from her and decided to come investigate.

Michael has barely slid from the biobed when Chris enters, looking all captainly and put together again in his uniform and with his hair tamed.

Pollard beckons him over. “Apologies, by the way, for the early morning call, Captain. I was at my wit’s end – I’m no psychologist, beyond what you’re forced to pick up on the job. Since he kept pushing away those who know him, I thought an approach from someone unknown might work better.”

Chris waves her off. “I’m happy to sacrifice a few hours of sleep if it helps one of my crew.” A light frown touches his brow and Michael’s fingers twitch with the sudden urge to reach out and smooth it away. Mildly appalled at herself, she doesn’t meet Chris’ gaze when it flicks to her. Lowering her barriers is all well and good (and far overdue, according to Tilly), but she hadn’t expected _this_.

Thankfully, Chris has refocused on Pollard. “I can’t say how much good it did, but he did at least hear me out.”

“I think we can call that progress at this point,” Pollard says, wry. “If you could sit on the biobed for the brain scan, Captain.”

It quickly becomes clear that where Michael’s scan changed substantially from yesterday, Chris’ barely diverts.

Pollard throws up both of his scans and both of Michael’s, making the difference even clearer. “Captain, your curve is much more like what I predicted at the start of this. No acceleration.”

Chris’ captain’s mask slides firmly into place, even while his mind broadcasts a stabbing kind of distress that almost makes her wince. His control over his expressions would make a Vulcan proud, though he chooses to utilise the ability – hard-won through years of bridge service, she’d guess – sparingly.

“So Michael’s telepathy is going to fade before mine.”

It’s not pitched as a question, but he still awaits Pollard’s nod.

Chris’ voice grows even tighter. “Is the connection between us going to disappear once that happens or will it be one-sided?”

Michael breathes in sharply as understanding hits. He’s worried about having such close access to her mind when it’s not a reciprocal state. It tracks with that first, desperate conversation they had after his panic attack – she hadn’t forgotten his misgivings, far from it, but he’s been coping so well that it had ceased to be a constant worry. Or at least that’s how she’d read it.

He throws her another glance, something jagged in his eyes.

– _I have been… using you to anchor myself. A lot. If I concentrate on your mind, other input recedes, and_ you _can look back_ –

Chris doesn’t verbalise his instinctive revulsion at the thought of still doing that when her mind lays open to him, but she can’t return the favour. It doesn’t matter to him that their minds have already _been_ open for days now, that that first moment of joining on the shuttle revealed everything that could possibly be revealed in broad strokes, only lacking detail. If she can’t reciprocate, then he’s not comfortable with it, end of discussion.

It would be admirable if it weren’t so stubborn and logically inconvenient.

– _You do have my permission, if it comes to it_ – she offers, already knowing it won’t help, but what else can she say? There’s no contingency plan they can make when not even the isolation unit severs their bond. – _Besides, it may not happen. It would be logical for a bond to need two working ends to sustain itself_ –

– _Because everything about this situation has been logical_ – he counters wryly, but she can feel his renewed effort to corral his fears and carry on.

By the time they both refocus on Doctor Pollard, she’s standing with her hands on her hips.

“Back with us? As much fun as those little telepathic tete-a-tetes seem to be for you, some people have other things to do.”

Chris gestures her on, expression apologetic.

“To answer your question, we don’t know. If someone put a phaser to my head I’d say odds are the connection will fade without Michael’s abilities, but I can’t assure that’s what will happen.” Her eyes are sharp on Chris’ face. “Will you be able to cope if that’s the case?”

He doesn’t shrug, yet the air around him gives the impression he did. “I will have to.”

There’s nothing much else Pollard can do, so she lets them get on with their day with a stern reminder to come straight back if anything else develops.

“Katrina wants another update,” Chris answers her unasked question. “I did tell her nothing was likely to change in a week.”

“I missed the first debrief,” Michael admits, her lips twisting as she easily keeps pace next to him. “That must’ve been an interesting one.”

Chris snorts lightly, mind flashing to an image of Admiral Cornwell looking exasperated. “She’s starting to expect it from me these days. Though accidental telepathy is a new one – hence the micromanaging.”

Michael raises a brow. “If two check-ins in a week are your idea of micromanaging…”

“It’s a lot for the admiralty,” he points out, shaking his head. “Now that the war is over everyone seems to have a lot of time to stick their noses into normal ship-running.”

She can’t quite help the grin, fuelled by the knowledge that this teasing exchange is calming Chris down more than any assurances in sickbay had. “The captain of their flagship coming away from a first contact situation with telepathy is hardly ‘normal’.”

He glances at her, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Don’t you start, too.”

Michael dons an innocent expression that has his amusement expanding from eyes to lips. He may be a little frustrated with the increased oversight, but the complaints are mostly rote – he seems to think Cornwell’s increased scrutiny is mainly due to her attempts to stave off another, worse falling out between him and Leland.

She’s inclined to believe his greater insight into the workings of the admiralty, which she doesn’t envy him, either.

“Enjoy that update,” she tells him, receiving a deeply ironic look for her troubles. “I’ll be in engineering.”

Chris nods. “They can use the help.”

His mind reveals how much he wants to add something along the lines of ‘just try not to blow yourself up again’, but he knows that’s unfair and reins himself in.

Michael’s parting smile grows warm in appreciation.

*

The next few days Michael is kept busy by Stamets and Reno; with the flu still going around, fixing the relays takes longer than estimated and the hull repairs after their near-fatal adventure in the mycelial network are still ongoing. Stamets is pleased to have her help, not that he would ever say so out loud. She also gets to put her head together with Tilly when her friend isn’t busy on the bridge, optimising hull repair schedules.

Chris is spending the time catching up on paperwork and while Michael doesn’t mind the amounts of it as much as he does, she can’t say listening in on him is particularly interesting, except for the occasional expletive. Michael isn’t normally amused by invective, but somehow hearing him curse habitually and creatively in his own mind when it comes to certain things (which include paperwork and the admiralty – a venn diagram with significant overlap) is unexpectedly charming.

As far as the telepathy goes, it’s now part of her life. Perhaps it’s the decreasing intensity and range, but what had seemed impossible to get used to when it first happened, is rapidly becoming a background buzz to her thoughts, punctuated by Chris’ mind and when someone else surprises her.

When she mentions this to Tilly over lunch a week in – in the mess hall, now that a room full of people doesn’t automatically overwhelm her anymore – Tilly’s expression goes considering.

“Brains are weird – ‘s why I didn’t go into medicine rather than engineering.” Her expression brightens. “You’re adapting! It’s like a microcosm of evolution, just really sped up.”

“Right when I don’t need it anymore,” Michael observes, a little wry. “Without focusing I feel no more than half the mess hall now.”

Tilly sits up straighter. “Does that mean you can come back to sleep in our room? It’s been weirdly like I had my own quarters these last few days, if I had decided to strictly not decorate half of them.”

Michael can feel Tilly doesn’t mean that as a serious jab, but... “Do you mind that I don’t?”

“What? No, no, you do you. It’s not like most of us have that many personal items to spread around. Except for the captain, who has somehow managed to make a ready room that belonged to _Lorca_ homey and welcoming, which is a minor miracle, really.”

“He’s good at those,” Michael says, before she can think better of it.

Tilly’s eyes are uncomfortably keen on Michael’s face. “This whole thing…” She gestures with her fork, encompassing Michael, the person. “You’ve been a little less… stiff.”

Automatically, Michael stiffens. Vulcan had ingrained some ‘truths’ in her deeply, one of them being that mentions of her humanity never led anywhere good.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Tilly hastens to say. “You can still be Michael Burnham and be a little less controlled, you know? It’s your decision who you want to be.”

Sincerity spills from Tilly’s mind, relentless and unavoidable.

Perhaps the telepathy _has_ shifted her point of view a little – it’s such an intimate view into how _loose_ other people are, what they think about, worry about, are preoccupied by. She knows it has eased her interactions to have further insight into her interlocutors (less trying to feel her way around social conventions that still baffle her on the regular, for one thing). And then, of course, there’s Chris, whose mind lives alongside hers now, and if she thinks about it wouldn’t it be more surprising if nothing rubbed off there at all?

She takes the last bite of her cooling casserole dish.

It bears further thinking about.

“You may have a point,” she says out loud, and the apprehension building in Tilly’s mind collapses into something warmer, softer.

It occurs to Michael only later, already halfway back to engineering, that she hadn’t answered Tilly’s question about coming back to their quarters to sleep – had, in fact, avoided the question so thoroughly that she hadn’t even considered an answer. Because the truth is that she could probably sleep in her normal quarters just fine now that her telepathy radius had shrunk so much, but the thought leaves her feeling cold. She _likes_ sleeping with Chris, his warmth at her side and back, seeing him sleep-mussed and soft, and the quiet conversations before sleep. It also wouldn’t feel right to abandon him to the isolation unit while his mind is still too open to return to his own quarters, but even in her own mind that sounds more like an excuse than the main reason, true though it may be.

It hits her then, suddenly, that once the telepathy has worn off they’re going back to the normal routine of life – Michael living with Tilly, only seeing Chris when they’re both on duty, never being touched by him. The pang of loss that hits her is illogical, it hasn’t even happened yet, but she can’t quite push it aside.

The feeling must’ve caught Chris’ attention.

– _Michael, do you really think we’ll go back to how we were before the shuttle trip after this?_ – There’s a thread of sorrow in his silent voice, alongside disbelief and even a little hurt. – _Unless you want to_ –

– _No_ – her mind says, before she’s even really considered. Then, slower – _I don’t want that. I just feel that I need to brace for it nonetheless_ –

He sighs, the hurt fading. – _I get that. But I meant it when we agreed the discussion about our relationship is just postponed; and whatever the outcome, I will still be your friend_ –

And friends can spend time together outside of duty, friends can hug and be intimate and discuss personal matters – all this his mind makes clear and, thinking of Tilly, Michael can only agree.

*

While they’ve shared more dreams, none were as fraught as the first two. In fact, they had tended towards the peaceful. A vivid memory of Chris’ situating them on horseback in an Earth desert that had felt immediately familiar despite its dissimilarity to the kind of desert environment found on Vulcan, the wind blowing in their hair. Michael’s recollection of an unremarkable day at the Vulcan Science Academy. Given that the topic of the day had been astrophysics, Chris had grumbled something about ‘rubbing it in’ upon waking, but he had clearly been interested, following up with a variety of questions about the teaching at the academy. A thanksgiving meal at the Pike ranch, all cheer and raucous laughter. Spock teaching Michael the Vulcan salute.

Whichever subconscious processes determined what they share at night, Michael was certainly relieved to find out that it wasn’t actually designed to drag out their worst memories for the other’s perusal. At least Chris wouldn’t have to watch one of his friends die right in front of him.

As the intensity of their abilities decreases, more and more nights feature nothing but sleep. After eight days, Michael’s telepathy has become de facto touch telepathy, only really picking up someone else’s thoughts if they’re close enough to her to touch. The exception is Chris, of course – whatever drives it, their connection remains as crisp and clear and _present_ as it had been the first day. At this point she’s convinced it’ll be the last remnant of telepathy to go, and is glad of it, if more for his sake than hers.

It does mean that even with vastly reduced telepathic abilities, she still occasionally gets lost in her/his head, which is an unsettling experience for someone usually so in control of herself and her surroundings.

It also leads to the occasional mishap, including a memorable occasion when she rounds the corner at a brisk pace (when Stamets says ‘come now’ what he actually means is ‘arrive five minutes ago’) and almost walks straight into Ash. He reaches out to steady her and she moves backwards, using the motion to right herself. If she touches him now, she _will_ read his mind and they’ve so nearly made it through without that.

Hurt flickers across his face and Michael swallows. She doesn’t want to comfort him, but he doesn’t deserve to be misled.

“It’s basically touch-telepathy now,” she tells him, and the lines around his eyes ease. “I didn’t think you wanted me in your head. Op-sec.”

Even though she’s pretty sure it’s the truth – he has almost certainly been actively avoiding both Chris and Michael for over a week now, given the size of the ship and their respective duties – he crosses his arms across his chest and starts, “It’s not like that – ”

“Isn’t it?” Michael cuts him off. She doesn’t need to hear this again. “Last time I checked, Section 31 didn’t want anyone sticking their noses into their business, especially not Captain Pike.”

Ash’s eyes flicker. “So the rumours are true? Your minds are linked?”

Michael meets his gaze, feeling muted sadness for a potential that once might have been, but little else. “Is that any of your business?”

Silence blooms in the space between them, awkward and heavy.

Finally he says, quiet, “I suppose it isn’t. Take care of yourself, Michael.”

She watches him go, less conflicted than she’d thought she would be. Their paths had diverged, and she finds that she doesn’t regret that fact – not from where she’s standing now.

*

Michael is drifting in a content morning doze, warm under the blankets next to Chris, when his mind suddenly snuffs out. She’s sitting bolt upright, heart racing, before conscious thought catches up. Looking to the side, she finds Chris stirring, groaning slightly, a question in groggy eyes. He’s right there, clearly alive, mind still intact.

Her head feels _empty_.

Which means the last dredges of her telepathic ability have just disappeared because she can’t feel his mind at all, not even when she reaches out to touch the bare skin of his hand.

“Michael?” Chris murmurs, sleep draining from his posture. “Your mind feels… different.”

He doesn’t mention the way her fingers have slipped under his wrist to feel his pulse, a comforting thrum far slower than her own still upset heartbeat.

“I can’t feel you at all,” she says, something of her upset leaking into her voice because suddenly all she can feel is _loss_. Chris’ mind had been her constant companion for days, warm and reassuring and familiar, and _yes_ there’d been moments where she’d wished for more privacy, to be less transparent to him, but now that he is gone she immediately misses his presence.

Chris sits up, his own expression gone a little tight, though he’s careful not to dislodge her fingers from his wrist. “Your telepathy is gone entirely?”

She nods. The echoing quiet in her own head is as distracting as the sudden influx of input had been. This is normal. This is what her mind _should_ feel like. And yet it doesn’t feel right, confined and limited to her own skin.

“The bond is gone,” Chris tells her, a curious note to his voice that she doesn’t know how to interpret now that she doesn’t have instant access to his thoughts and feelings anymore. It suddenly feels like being back at square one, him a mystery, her an open book. “I can still feel your mind but it’s like everyone else’s now – Doctor Pollard was right.”

He shakes his head, as if to dislodge a stray thought and squeezes her hand. “You should go get checked out. I’ll clear this room up.”

Michael stares at him, still feeling somewhat detached from proceedings and hyperfocused on the subtle strain in the lines around his mouth. Comprehension dawns. Of course, there’s no point to remaining in the isolation unit together at night now that the bond is gone and his telepathic sensitivity diminished to the point where he should be able to sleep in his own quarters.

But that doesn’t explain the strain. Rudely awoken, mentally off-kilter, Michael can’t manage anything but asking bluntly, “What’s bothering you? Something’s wrong.”

Chris smiles, but it’s a small, painful-looking thing. “I’d rather not continue reading your mind now that you’re unable to reciprocate, Michael.”

“I don’t mind, Chris,” she says, a little helpless. She truly doesn’t – he already knows everything there’s worth knowing about her, one way or another. And it’s not like he can help it anymore than she could help it while her abilities lasted.

“I do,” he says, quiet. “It doesn’t feel right, or equal. I could ignore it with other people, do my best not to go too deep with anyone, but you? I can’t help it with you.”

She frowns. “So you’re going to avoid me for four days?”

“Going by your timeline, I should be down to touch-telepathy by the end of tomorrow. I can manage a day of hiding in my quarters.”

Michael doesn’t agree with his reasons, but it _is_ his choice to make and she’ll respect it. Perhaps it’s for the best to get used to his absence. Her current destabilised state is proof enough that she got far too dependent on Chris’ presence and it’s not like she has any guarantees that he’ll be around much longer.

Chris seems to catch that thought for his mouth tightens, but he only rises after a last squeeze of her hand. As he starts gathering his uniform and the bedding, Michael gets changed before heading into sickbay proper to have Tracy run some more tests on her.

*

The entire day, she feels off-balance, uncomfortable in her own mind. Everything is so _silent_ and however much she tells herself that that’s normal and how it should be, how her mind had _always_ been, it doesn’t seem to make a difference to the persistent unease lingering at the edges of her thinking.

Three times, she loses herself in work and reaches for Chris’ mind only to find panic trickling down her spine at the emptiness that greets her. Twice, she has to ask the computer to relay his whereabouts so she can calm her racing heart, listening to the cool voice say “Captain Pike is in his quarters” which is just about enough proof that he’s on board and still alive even if she can’t sense him anymore.

The upside of Doctor Pollard confirming her ‘no more telepathy, brain back to normal’ state is that she gets to return to full duty and replace Nilsson at the science station on the bridge. It takes her mind off missing having Chris near, mentally _and_ physically and the bridge crew welcomes her back warmly.

The first night she sleeps fitfully, despite the familiar sound of Tilly’s snoring. It makes no logical sense that she could’ve got so used to someone sleeping right next to her in such a short time that her unconscious mind is discomfited by the absence. And yet the second night is smoother as she reacclimatises to her own quarters. A long talk with Tilly while they’re already in their respective beds also helps, anchoring her in the here and now even as she struggles to describe the experience of being telepathic in words that make any kind of sense.

In the evening of her third day without a shred of telepathy, Michael’s data padd lights up with a message from Chris.

Certified 100% telepathy-free. Dinner?

Her heart jumps.

There isn’t any question that she’ll say yes, especially with some of her worries calmed by the speed with which he’d made the offer once his telepathy had also worn off. It’s another piece of proof that his feelings are as real as hers, and that his reticence stemmed from the circumstances, not… anything else.

By the time she reaches his quarters, she feels paradoxically calmer than she has in days. Some of that certainty she’d felt while their minds had been intertwined has returned, a warm blanket around her shoulders.

Michael hadn’t thought to change out of her uniform, but Chris greets her in casual clothes. Going by the warmth spilling from his smile, he doesn’t mind the mismatch.

Michael glances at the table where a few steaming plates sit. “Are we really going to have dinner first?”

“I don’t know about you, but I really _am_ hungry,” he says, and that’s _definitely_ a twinkle in his eyes. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

Michael frowns – he’s usually meticulous about not missing meals.

In answer to her raised eyebrow, he shrugs. “I was running a bit late today and then I was in sickbay.”

Chris gallantly gestures her to a seat, Michael obliging as she looks over the food. He hasn’t gone overboard, just a couple of dishes that he knows she likes and the same for him.

In between bites of his chicken, Chris says, “I can’t say I expected a few days to make such a difference to my perspective.”

Remembering how unmoored she had felt right after the telepathy had disappeared entirely, Michael nods. “I get that. For a while everyone I encountered felt very… two-dimensional. I was missing the telepathic input.”

Chris puts down his knife, letting out a relieved breath. “ _Exactly_. I didn’t expect the emptiness in my head. This is how my head has always been, right? It shouldn’t feel so strange.”

It occurs to her how unsettling that must be for him, given his initial and continuing discomfort with telepathy. To now miss it must seem very counterintuitive to him.

Without thinking about it, Michael reaches out and grasps his free hand, the contact stilling them both. “It does wear off. And until then – I’m happy to remind you that I’m very real.”

Chris smiles, an edge of gratefulness that Michael doubts she would’ve recognised two weeks ago, and turns his wrist so their palms lie flat on each other.

For a moment the air feels charged, something unspoken passing across his expression. Then he returns his attention to his food and steers the topic of conversation to lighter matters.

By the time they’ve both finished – and she did note that Chris matched his eating speed to hers – Michael isn’t nervous, but a tingling sense of anticipation has taken up residence deep in her belly. It’s strange to think how the last two weeks have opened her to the idea of a relationship, with its accompanying vulnerability and risk. Then again, accidental telepathy _is_ strange and a bit ludicrous, so perhaps she shouldn’t be surprised.

Sensing some of her mood, Chris looks at her, almost solemn, and murmurs, “Here we are.”

Michael rises, even as she holds his gaze. She doesn’t want the table in between them for this, doesn’t need anything to hide behind.

“My feelings haven’t changed,” she says as he, too, rises and steps towards her. “Have yours?”

He tilts his head, the collar of his jumper shifting with the motion. “No. You have taken up quite firm residence in my heart.” It’s said so easily, as if he doesn’t find it at all hard to speak out loud what their minds had already confirmed.

And yet there’s still a sense of hesitance about him that his next words confirm. “I know you’ve already thought through all the upsides and downsides, but… I need to know you’re sure. You were worried about my posting.”

“Are you this careful about every relationship you enter?” Michael asks, because she honestly wants to know but also because she needs to marshal her thoughts before she can address the other issue he raised.

“My position makes misunderstandings problematic,” Chris murmurs, eyes steady on her face. They’re standing close enough now that it would be easy to reach out and touch – or kiss. “Better to avoid the risk as much as possible. I don’t want anyone to feel pressured.”

Michael catches his gaze. “I’m not. You haven’t, as you well know. And I can promise you that my mind is as much mine as it ever has been.”

He nods. “Mine, too.” His toe goes wry. “And yet you didn’t answer my question.”

“You didn’t phrase it as a question,” she fires back, though it is, of course, beside the point and they both know it. At his slightly exasperated look, she sighs, clasping her hands just so that her fingers have something to do. “I do worry about it. If we start this now… I don’t think it could be something short-lived. I wouldn’t want it to be. But I saw the way you feel about it, that trying is worth it. That love is worth it, even when we can’t see where the future will lead us.”

The way he’s looking at her now, heavy and warm, is almost enough to derail her thoughts.

“And I’m tired of denying myself,” she whispers, caught in his gaze. “I _want this_.”

She doesn’t think she can be any clearer than that, but he _still_ doesn’t move forward and Michael, at the end of her patience, does so for him. As soon as she tilts her head up and their lips brush, Chris gets with the programme. Maybe it was the last thing he needed, her taking the first step.

It’s easy to get lost in the warm, soft slide of his lips, the way his eyelashes flutter shut, the feeling of his hair under her hand where she grips his head.

Eventually she pulls back, breathing deeply. Her fingers have mussed his hair, strands falling loose.

This time, when he pulls her close it’s to enfold her in an embrace that settles her head just above his heart. As Chris presses a kiss into her hair, Michael closes her eyes. She doesn’t need telepathy to enjoy this closeness, doesn’t need to literally read his mind when he so clearly shows what he feels. For once, she doesn’t feel like worrying about tomorrow.

*

“Commander Burnham to the ready room.”

Michael looks up from her half-eaten lunch, surprised by the summons. With an apologetic look at Culber across the table, she slides her chair out and puts away her dishes before making her way towards the bridge.

She doesn’t think Chris would call her in the middle of the day without warning for personal business (even if a quiet, furtive part of her wouldn’t mind it if he did, minor abuse of authority or no), but a quick scan through everything that has happened today doesn’t bring up anything work-related that would warrant personal attention from the captain.

Michael enters to find Chris shaking his head at the hologram of Admiral Cornwell, a wry quirk to his lips. Whatever they’d been talking about is interrupted by her arrival, both of their attentions turning to her.

“Admiral,” Michael greets. “You called for me?”

Cornwell nods briskly. “I’ve got news I thought both of you would appreciate.”

As she talks, Michael moves forward to stand next to Chris, careful to keep a respectable distance between them, despite the newly-stoked desire to be as close to him as possible whenever they’re in the same room.

Cornwell’s eyes flicker over them both, something knowing in them that gives Michael a fair idea of what she and Chris had been talking about previously. Thankfully, she doesn’t comment. Michael hadn’t exactly thought about her relationship being scrutinised by the _admiralty_ when she’d developed feelings for Chris. Though perhaps she should have – he’s Captain Pike, after all.

“On both your recommendations, we decided to risk second contact with the species you encountered. A telepathic envoy was sent and we just received word that contact was successful. The Vashida were receptive to opening diplomatic relations, although they have no interest in joining the Federation.” Cornwell clasps her hands behind her back. “I’m given to understand they asked after you and were pleased to hear that you suffered no permanent ill due to their greeting.”

She pauses, long enough that Michael flicks a glance towards Chris to gauge whether he knows what’s coming.

“In fact, they apparently congratulated you on the strength of your… connection and extend an invitation to visit them again, should you wish to repeat the experience. They think they can make their presence less harmful to humans, now that they have a baseline.”

Michael blinks. That’s… unexpected. Without the advantage of telepathy she can’t read Chris’ reaction to this revelation at all, his face blank, but for her own part she would have expected a clearer ‘no’ reaction than she’s actually experiencing. She still doubts the long-term practicality, but there _had_ been advantages that she’d intellectually anticipated but not been able to understand the truth of beforehand.

She exchanges a long glance with Chris. His lips quirk.

They turn back to Cornwell.

“We’ll think about it,” they say, together.

***


End file.
